The Key to Making Real Friends Your Freshman Year

During my first few months of college, I had a burning urge to reach high school popularity. That doesn’t exactly make sense – I know – because how can I be high school popular at a college, right? 

Well, the goal was simple: befriend people who I thought would have been high school popular, just to get a taste of what my life could have been. After all, before I came to Boston University, I attended a small liberal arts college in rural Minnesota. With a student population of 3,000, everyone knew everyone and small cliques had begun to form at the start of orientation. Being a naive 17-year-old, I wanted in. 

Essentially, if I imitated the behavior, mindset, and look of the girls I wanted to be, I believed I would fit in nicely with the people I’d never have gotten along with in high school. 

For two months it worked, and I even acquired a pseudonym to reflect my new personality – Lily.

Being in a suburban high school teen-movie clique was exactly what I had expected it to be like: drinking, drama, and a boyfriend who drove a BMW. As delicious and cinematic as it’d seem at the table-read of a John Hughes script, to no one’s surprise I was woefully unhappy with the people I surrounded myself with. 

I was going to social events I wasn’t interested in, with people I didn’t care about, and quite frankly, it sucked.

Ultimately, I stopped mirroring them, and (to no one’s surprise) they stopped liking me. I quickly found myself having to find another group of friends and I was at a loss. It had been so long since I’d tried to make friends, I forgot how it was done. 

So, for once I tried something new. I began to meet people with a candid what-you-see-is-what-you-get honesty, and it seemed that the people who surrounded themselves around me developed an appreciation for it.

I’d been hanging around in my friend Cameron’s room a lot at the time and I’d gotten a lot closer with his roommates Dorian and Andres because of it. We lived in the same hall, so transportation was easy, and Andres had really taken a liking to me.

That brings us to one particular Saturday. I was having a movie night with some friends in the lounge of Neegan Hall, when all of a sudden I got a text from Andres. He was inviting me to a party. 

Keep in mind, Andres was a sophomore, so I was squealing internally to be getting an invitation from an upperclassman to go with his upperclassmen friends to an upperclassman party. 

I accepted, and he pulled up to Neegan in a minivan, gesturing for me to sit shotgun. It was snowy and the windows were fogged up, so when I entered the car I didn’t expect to see 5 people sitting behind me.

I was nervous at first. I suspected that he intentionally saved the front passenger seat for me, and so these people were probably aching to see who the freshman Andres dragged along was like. Quietly, I sank into the chair and thought about how I can mirror them so that they would start to like me.

Suddenly I hear a voice say my name.

“Lily! Do you go by Lily or Alexia? I’ve heard both.”

Dominique DuPont was sitting in the middle of the second row. She was everything I’d ever wanted to be—classy, elegant, naturally beautiful—and I’d seen her around campus looking regal as ever in her signature heels, jeans, and blouse topped with a chic updo. There she was, in the row behind me. Suddenly, she was so accessible. When I turned to face her, she smiled sweetly.

I told her that I go by Lily (I had to do it for consistency’s sake), realized that she knew my name, and thought how simple it would have been to have just been myself from the start. I didn’t need to be high school popular, because high school popularity is overrated and stupid.

I didn’t have to try to fit in. I got to be myself and be treated with kindness and dignity.

The party was an intimate gathering between a few people, and whereas in my old friend group I would have been ignored and pushed aside, people were actively engaging me in activities.  

They wanted me there. I was wanted. 

There was no pressure to be someone else because they were all interested in the real me. Music was pumping loudly through the speakers, everyone was laughing, and it was the first time I genuinely felt at home at my school. Dominique grabbed my hand and led me to the center of the room. She twirled me. 

While we danced, I forgot about the drama, the peer pressure, and the pandemonium of my first few months of college. Instead, all I kept thinking was, “I’m so so happy.”

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