What’s Your Major? A deep-dive into making friends in college.

Start­ing col­lege can be over­whelm­ing, but find­ing your peo­ple makes all the dif­fer­ence. In this episode, we talk to UConn stu­dents about how they made their first friends dur­ing their first semester—whether it was through clubs, Greek life, or just step­ping out­side their com­fort zone. Hear their sto­ries, advice, and reflec­tions on build­ing con­nec­tions in a brand-new environment.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Jake McCreven, and you’re lis­ten­ing to “What’s Your Major?”

This episode we’ll hear from four stu­dents all with very dif­fer­ent sto­ries on how they met their col­lege friends, and we’ll explore how you can, too.

[MUSIC TO TRANSITION]

Are you pre­pared to chart the waters of your first semes­ter as a col­lege stu­dent from a social aspect? Are you ner­vous about meet­ing new peo­ple – you know, not the same sev­en or eight you’ve been hang­ing with the last ten years of your life?

[MUSIC FADES]

I asked a hand­ful of stu­dents how they went about meet­ing new peo­ple dur­ing their first semes­ter of col­lege. Some of them spend hours a day in the Stu­dent Union work­ing for the radio sta­tion. Oth­ers write for The Dai­ly Cam­pus, or film for UCTV.

I also talked to a hand­ful of broth­ers at UConn’s AKL fra­ter­ni­ty to cap­ture the oth­er side of forg­ing friend­ships; Greek life.

[PARTYING SOUND EFFECTS]

Let’s hear what they had to say.

“It def­i­nite­ly took a bit of time to get accli­mat­ed on cam­pus, con­sid­er­ing the fact that I did­n’t real­ly know where I was going, and I felt as if I was a semes­ter behind because I did­n’t know any­body. it did­n’t help that the peo­ple on my floor did­n’t real­ly talk to each other.”

We’ve all been there – trust me.

That was Katie Ser­vas, a sopho­more jour­nal­ism major who now works as the News Direc­tor at the radio sta­tion here on cam­pus after trans­fer­ring in from Stam­ford in the spring of 2024.

[AUDIO SCENE OF SERVAS OPERATING SOUND BOARD IN

STUDENT UNION]

“So I kind of just start­ed get­ting involved in the Tier Three orga­ni­za­tions. I went to a Dai­ly Cam­pus news meet­ing, but before I went to that I went to a few meet­ings at

WHUS Radio, which is kind of where I found my footing.”

[END OF AUDIO SCENE]

That was Ser­vas explain­ing how to oper­ate a sound­board to a class of onboard­ing stu­dents. WHUS has seen a growth in total mem­bers since COVID hit, with Ser­vas telling me that this past semes­ter was the high­est aver­age atten­dance at WHUS News Com­mit­tee since 2019. 

Let’s hear what sopho­more Julia Sas­so had to say when asked about how clubs helped her find her people:

“I start­ed hang­ing out more with Avery because we were doing a show togeth­er for UCTV, so we were see­ing each oth­er every week and we were spend­ing a lot of time togeth­er and that’s how we grew closer.”

Anoth­er Tier Three orga­ni­za­tion men­tioned there, did you catch it?

“I think since like you’re meet­ing peo­ple in an envi­ron­ment where you have sim­i­lar inter­ests, you’re all kind of doing the same thing. It helps you build a bet­ter basis for a friend­ship, and since you’re see­ing each oth­er every week or like every oth­er day, it helps build that overtime.”

Shared pas­sions can serve as the kin­dling for col­lege friend­ships, but there are oth­er ways to meet peo­ple, too. Don’t feel forced to work in media to find friends – take it from Ryan Bernar­do, a mem­ber of UConn’s Alpha Kap­pa Lam­ba fraternity.

“I mean, yeah, the pledg­ing process in gen­er­al, you know, you’re forced to be around the same guys a lot, you know, you’re doing every­thing togeth­er, so you kind of build this bond with each oth­er that makes you real­ly close.”

And they are around each oth­er… a lot. With a min­i­mum of four nights per week of meet-ups, the AKL fra­ter­ni­ty at UConn forges friend­ships from the sec­ond you write your name down as a pledge.

Bond­ing over music or report­ing can be just as effec­tive as bond­ing over rich broth­er­hood tra­di­tions, and so can any oth­er medi­um of social interaction.

I con­duct­ed more than ten inter­views with stu­dents across cam­pus to make this pod­cast, and one mes­sage ran through­out each of them; friend­ships in col­lege often start when you find a space where you feel like you belong.

“First semes­ter I most­ly just hung out with peo­ple that were on my dorm floor and just over time as we all start­ed like doing our own activ­i­ties, we kind of fell out of touch. and that’s when I start­ed hang­ing out more with Avery because we were doing a show togeth­er for UCTV.”

That was Sas­so, who was sit­ting next to her best friend, Avery Becker

“I would say, you know, just real­ly take that leap of faith, you know what I mean? It seems daunt­ing — It seems scary. I know a lot of peo­ple when they come to col­lege, they real­ly want to find that big friend group, but, you know, just start off small, you know, meet peo­ple, stuff like that. Like I met Julia at UCTV because she said she was a fan of the Dev­ils and I was like, oh my God, anoth­er fan of the Dev­ils. Like try to relate with peo­ple who have sim­i­lar inter­ests as you because you don’t real­ize that about a lot of peo­ple are in the same boat where they want to make friends and meet more peo­ple and expand their horizons.”

Good point, Avery. A lot of peo­ple are in the same boat as you, and I think that’s some­thing a lot of peo­ple fail to real­ize as first semes­ter students.

“I know that I’m a per­son that I can get real­ly wrapped up in my com­fort zone, so I kind of remind­ed myself that the only way to get com­fort­able in this new envi­ron­ment is to make myself a lit­tle uncom­fort­able first.”

That’s anoth­er point I saw come up pret­ty com­mon­ly through­out my inter­views; being uncom­fort­able. Nobody likes talk­ing to strangers, but when you’re pit­ted on a cam­pus with 20,000 strangers and close to zero friends, it can be tough. You real­ly do have to force your­self to be uncom­fort­able to meet peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those who you may want to keep in touch with after the first interaction.

“I would just say like you have to like you just can’t care. You just you have to just go for it and explore a lit­tle bit and make your­self a lit­tle uncom­fort­able because it’ll end up bring­ing you to some of the best oppor­tu­ni­ties that you may ever have in college.”

“I guess what I would say is take that leap of faith, expand your hori­zons and just try some­thing new because you nev­er know what could happen.”

Bot­tom line; don’t stress if you don’t meet your life­long best friend in the first three months of col­lege, espe­cial­ly if you feel as though you haven’t found your foot­ing yet.

[MUSIC STARTS]

Take the time and explore cam­pus a lit­tle bit. Lis­ten to the ran­dom pop up con­certs, go to tabling events or rush in Greek life. Find­ing life­long best friends is a process, not some­thing you serendip­i­tous­ly find.

Take it from me. I met my room­mates for next year through my job with UConn Ath­let­ics, not through MyCol­lege­Roomie or an Insta­gram page.

So what­ev­er you do your first semes­ter, don’t wor­ry about friends. They’ll come around, just know that there are 5,000 brand new stu­dents in the same exact posi­tion as you.