Letter from the President: Making Friends in the Age of Remote Learning
Welcome back SWE!
Whether you are going into your final year at Berkeley (like myself) or getting ready to take your first ever college classes (and everything in between) we are all faced with the reality that meeting new people is going to look a lot different. I, like probably most people at Cal, met new people through club events and classes. In fact, most of my close friend group now consists of people in SWE and my entire apartment this year is SWE! Unfortunately, awkward conversation over Racha’s in 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building that blooms into lifelong friendship isn’t a luxury we have this semester. So can we even make new connections in the age of remote learning? The answer is YES❗❗️❗️
The case study we are going to look at is… myself. When I went home in March and realized I wasn’t going to be able to go back to Berkeley and see any of my friends, I was sure that I would just spend every day watching Netflix and maybe reading some books if I felt especially ~smart~ some days.Then I introduced crosswords to my friends. It started out with a group chat of about 10 people and we would send links to downforacross, but then people started inviting their other friends and we started joining Zoom calls to play other games and now it is rare that there is a day in the week that I am not on a video call with these people. Some of the people I call regularly I haven’t even met in person, or only met once or twice through a mutual friend but we are probably closer than some people I interacted with regularly when I was on campus. In case anyone was curious, our max call time was 8 hours in one night — after a work day!
This is all to say that you shouldn’t give up on meeting new people and making new friends this semester just because you might not get to meet them in person until spring. SWE is going to do everything in our power to create a welcoming virtual community, but it’s a two way street so we need people to participate in the events we host! Join the SWE Slack, Facebook page, and Facebook group to stay up to date on all the ways you can stay involved in the SWE community this upcoming semester. I hope I get to meet some of you this semester and I’m looking forward to braving the wild ride this school year is going to bring ❤️
Zoe Husted
President
UC Berkeley SWE
