5 Types of People You’ll Befriend and Never Talk to After This Week

Esha Datanwala

Illustration by Sowmya Vaidyanathan

Orientation Week is a tough time. You’re surrounded not only by dimwits like yourself, trying not to get lost around the 30 (minus construction) acre campus, but also predatory seniors, depressed administration members, and old YIFs who look a little too excited to see you.

Don’t worry though, we’re here to guide you through this 1-week-long apocalypse so that you have a slightly better squad to storm the dhaba with.

1. That friend from school: Y’all never really got along, but when you’re on a strange campus with strange strangers, it’s best to stick to what you know. You’re going to spend the entire week stuck together until everybody’s convinced that you guys are best friends until the day y’all get into a massive bitch fight that ends with you realizing exactly why you guys were never friends in the first place. Better the bitch you don’t know than the one who knows you. Nobody wants their dirty laundry remembered before their name.
2. Your cohort leader: Yes, they seem super enthused to be your friend, and yes, you’re gonna find it a little weird. It’s a power dynamic you don’t really want to think about, but maybe they’ve been told not to hit on their cohort kids? They aren’t really gonna tell you the truth about Ashoka, even though you expect them to, and slowly but surely they’re gonna forget about you for their actual friends. You’re just a first-year charity case, and they probably only befriended you because of your hot not-friend.
3. That YIF from the smoking room: Face it, you only started smoking because you overheard someone talking about the INSANE friends they made in the smoking room and how TIGHT they are with the seniors and how HUMID the dance room gets during the 3AM orgies. You were halfway through setting yourself on fire when a YIF walked in and lit your cigarette, like a rom-com Bollywood movie set in the Kaminey universe.
4. Your BFF from the WhatsApp group: You THOUGHT they were going to be just as fun and talkative in person as they were on that batch WhatsApp group. Turns out, people are generally more social online when they’re antisocial offline. Hey, not everybody has the privilege to fill up the spare months between 12th boards hell and Ashoka hell with fancy vacations or internships. Some people actually choose to calm the fuck down. They accidentally let slip a mildly controversial opinion in front of you and many many many many many many (approx 600 people) others, and now you just can’t associate yourself with them.
5. Your roommate: You’ve seen the cliché college movies and read those cliché Wattpad stories under your covers in the 7th grade. You know that you’re supposed to be SOULMATES with your roommate. And you try. Really hard. But the Ashoka roommate pairing system is perhaps just as flawed as the infrastructure, the organization, the workers’ rights, the electricity, and pollution, so all you guys do is awkwardly talk about your classes sometimes until both of you pop the question of changing roommates at the end of the year and sigh in relief when the other admits they want to see other people.