{"id":154,"date":"2012-10-28T22:27:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T05:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/samanthasays\/?p=333"},"modified":"2012-10-28T22:27:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T05:27:42","slug":"meeting-people-vs-making-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/2012\/10\/28\/meeting-people-vs-making-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting People vs. Making Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m assuming that by now everyone has heard of whatweshouldcallubc.tumblr.com; I discovered it last week and went through the whole thing. Something that stuck out to me was <a href=\"http:\/\/whatweshouldcallubc.tumblr.com\/post\/33638072332\/i-swear-your-blog-has-literally-light-up-my-days-here\">a post about how people are &#8220;dying of loneliness&#8221;<\/a>, and there was at least one other consisting of upper year students also saying how they&#8217;d only just found their place or still haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>It made me think about how 1) it&#8217;s very common to not find your niche immediately as some people feel they should, and 2) how it&#8217;s very common for various organizations on campus to shove lots of ways to meet people down your throat and saying &#8220;Yes making friends is so easy here, you&#8217;ll have a group in no time.&#8221; Because seriously, <strong>meeting people and making friends with people are two very different things<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Some good ways of meeting people include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Introducing yourself to the people you sit near in your classes.<\/li>\n<li>Attending residence\/AMS events.<\/li>\n<li>Hanging around in common areas, if you&#8217;re in residence.<\/li>\n<li>Joining an intramural team, or participating in other UBC REC events.<\/li>\n<li>Joining a club.<\/li>\n<li>Chatting up random people in line for Starbucks or at the bus stop.<\/li>\n<li>Wearing a nerdy t-shirt. It&#8217;s amazing how many nerds who love the same stuff you can attract.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s true, the above list is slightly skewed towards on-campus students. It&#8217;s an unfortunate fact, but if you want to meet people as a commuter, you have to put in effort. It evens out in the end though, because here&#8217;s the thing about making friends: it takes effort. Except for a few exceptionally outgoing individuals who are certainly not me, meeting someone does not equal being friends with them.<\/p>\n<p>Some good ways of making friends with people (a skill that I am always trying to improve upon):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Initiate conversation<\/strong>. I know you want them to start talking to\u00a0<em>you<\/em>, that you want to feel like they like you, but realistically they&#8217;re probably sitting there thinking the same thing. And if you don&#8217;t speak up, no one will. And friendships generally aren&#8217;t born out of silence. (Not good at speaking to other humans? Start with, &#8220;Hey, how are you?&#8221; And ask\u00a0<em>questions<\/em>. Ask them about their weekend, any exciting plans coming up, ask them about themselves, their preferences. Don&#8217;t give up, it takes practice.)<\/li>\n<li>Arrange a time to <strong>meet up<\/strong> where you can have some solid get-to-know you time. The five minutes before class starts does not count. Go for coffee, have a movie marathon in your dorm room, explore downtown, see a concert you&#8217;re both interested in, a one-on-one study session. Or it could be a group thing, too.<\/li>\n<li>Get their number and <strong>text them<\/strong>. Don&#8217;t be creepy or obsessive, but some casual banter can keep you on their radar and if you&#8217;re scared to ask them to hang out it can take some pressure off.<\/li>\n<li>Do\/say nice things. People like people who make them feel good. Again, don&#8217;t paint their name on the side of the clock tower, but compliments and remembering their birthday or saving them a seat can go a long way.<\/li>\n<li>Meeting people and making friends go together best when you meet people in a place where you&#8217;re <strong>doing something you&#8217;re interested in<\/strong>; lots of the time they have the same mindset as you and you&#8217;ll have something to talk about and do together.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It kind of sounds like I&#8217;m giving dating advice here, but honestly, a good friendship takes nearly as much effort as a romantic relationship. \u00a0If you don&#8217;t go out looking, most of the time, it isn&#8217;t going to land in your lap. Lots of people I know have made friends through their classes, and I met most of my friends through residence and knitting club. \u00a0It&#8217;s not guaranteed that you&#8217;ll click with every person you make an effort to talk to, but if you never try, then you&#8217;ll never know. \u00a0Just keep trying, because your kindred spirit is out there, looking for you too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m assuming that by now everyone has heard of whatweshouldcallubc.tumblr.com; I discovered it last week and went through the whole thing. Something that stuck out to me was a post about how people are &#8220;dying of loneliness&#8221;, and there was &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/samanthasays\/2012\/10\/28\/meeting-people-vs-making-friends\/\">Continue reading <span>&#8594;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/2012\/10\/28\/meeting-people-vs-making-friends\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1957,47,329843,560989,206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-life","category-friends","category-loneliness","category-meeting-people","category-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/blogsquadalumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}