How Friendship Can Positively Affect your Life
How I became a different person in college.
By: Jacob Kercher
“College has changed you into a whole new person”, said Seth. This is what my best friend said to me after a month at college. In high school I tended to be more anti-social and avoided people. Because of this my high school experience was very depressing. Since then I have found out that I really like being social and hanging out with people. This is my story on how my perspective of friendship changed during college.
It all started a couple days after I moved into college. All the freshman were going to the focus orientation events during this time before classes. I decided to down to the Phoenix club to play some games. This is when I met my first friends at college. I was invited to play a Cards Against Humanity game with a lot of people. From this group of people, I made a lot of new friends, and we made a group chat to stay in touch. This was the moment that I first realized that I liked to hang out with people a lot more than being alone in my room playing video games.
Using social media has been very effective in communicating with friends in college. According to Natasha , president of NKPR, there are so many people we communicate with online who, without social media, we might never have known. The world really is getting smaller, and we’re now connected to each other both digitally and physically. This quote from the Huffington post is especially true when it comes to my experience. Social media has helped me create strong connections with the many new friends I have made in college. I can send funny memes, get to know people more, and I am able to find out when my friends want to hang out. I believe that social media is a very important for making friends and keeping in touch with friends.
When I was in high school I was usually playing video games alone in my house in my free time. That caused me to be very lonely and even depressed. According to a journalist from Psychology Today being alone increases stress, and the risk of suicide for young and old alike. Since I was alone so much in high school, I did have a lot of stress and even though of suicide. I had a great family and some friends I talked with at school, but I always felt like something was missing. In college if I feel sad or depressed hanging out with my friends always make me feel better. I have learned that friendship is way more important than video games.
I think I was secretly an extrovert pretending I was an introvert.
I believe that friendship is the most important thing to have in college. I have had a very good time in college because of the many friends I have made. According to the Mayo Clinic friendship increases your sense of belonging and purpose, boosts your happiness and reduce your stress, and improves your self-confidence and self-worth. My experience in college has shown this data to be true. I almost feel like a different person now that I have been in college for a full month. I have more energy to do things and I feel like I finally belong. The idea of friendship is so simple that sometimes we forget how essential it is in our lives. Before college started I was afraid I would not have friends, but those worries are all gone now.
According to success.com whether a best actor, business legend or superstar athlete, winners know how to surround themselves with people who are smarter, more experienced or better connected than they are. This idea is a something that I have been doing frequently in college. I hang around people who are very social and that has rubbed off on me. Being around more independent people has made me want to be more independent as well. Before college I was deathly afraid of being an adult, but I can now say that I am no longer as scared as I once was. My friends have helped me to not be afraid.
Anyone can benefit from friendship as I have. You need to ask yourself what friendship means to you? It can change depending on the person, but it always has similar functions. To utilize friendship in your life one must be able to open to people. It may be hard at first, but after a while you start to realize that everyone is similar, and everyone wants to feel like they belong.