Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
Coming into the first year of college, almost everyone is excited for the same thing: making new friends. For some people, finding friends is a piece of cake. For others, it’s a real challenge.
But despite what it looks like, living in the dorms does not guarantee you’ll find your new best friends.
It seems simple enough — you’re in a dorm building with 20-80 people your age on the same floor. Surely, you think, you’ll be friends with at least some of them — maybe even the whole hallway.
But it doesn’t usually work that way.
From the start, students picture what dorm life will look like. Social media creates this image of the perfect dorm life with an aesthetic room and hallway friendships. There’s even all these dorm TikTok trends where people knock on doors to say hi or pull a prank on you. But most of that isn’t realistic, and when it doesn’t happen, it’s easy to feel like something’s wrong.
Making friends in the dorms is especially hard if you move in during the middle of welcome week. It feels weird to insert yourself into cliques that formed days before you arrived. Once people build their little group, it feels impossible to put yourself out there; you feel late to the game. Then, with whomever you do meet, you have to pretend like you’re friends even though you have no idea if you will ever talk to them again.
Some students also leave their doors open during the first few days hoping to meet people, but that isn’t the case everywhere. In my move-in experience, most doors stayed shut. And honestly, it felt awkward to knock on someone’s door just to say hi.
Privacy in the dorms gets in the way. To make friends, you usually have to invite people into your room or walk into theirs — even if you barely know them. It feels awkward and uncomfortable, but in the dorms, you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Even bathrooms play a role in inhibiting friendships from forming. When dorms have communal bathrooms, it’s easy to run into people and start small conversations. If you consistently see the same people there, then that turns into friendships. But here at Colorado State University, we have a lot of dorms without communal bathrooms, meaning we lose one of the easiest chances to connect with people in our hallways.
It always looked like everyone else already had a group first year, meanwhile I was still figuring it out. Going to events alone is intimidating. The longer it went on for me, the more I worried I became that I was falling behind. This caused me to doubt myself and my college, but adjusting to college life takes longer for some people. It’s completely normal to not want to be social during the first weeks of school; it is a major transition.
So no, dorm life doesn’t guarantee you’ll walk away with built-in best friends. For many students, it makes the process harder. Between closed doors, early cliques, private bathrooms and the pressure to find your people right away, dorm life is lonely and makes finding friendships hard.
Some people find their lifelong friends in the dorms, which is great. But for many, it is very difficult. If you’re lucky, then maybe you’ve had the same group of friends from home for forever, so you haven’t had to make new friends in awhile. That is OK. It is a big adjustment.
And remember — you don’t need to replace your old friends. Just add new ones.
You will find your people, it might just take time. But don’t give up on yourself.
Reach Charlotte Seymour at letters@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
