How to Make Profitable Friendships
As a student, the quality of friendships you make while in school will go a long way to affect your academic performance, social life, personal growth, exposure, even religious inclinations. As a young adult in college or university, you’ll likely want to belong and feel among in school, you don’t want to always be on your own. It is important to build the right friendships as they could serve to be of immense value while on campus and be of great help later in life. But we all know that making friends can be a bit dicey, apart from the fact that some people easily make friends than others, the part of choosing right friends is important. Check up on the following tips to guide you as you take on a deliberate approach towards establishing profitable friendships.
First Thing
Understand that when you are a friend to someone, it isn’t just about you, what you want, how you want it and when you want it. It has to be a mutual relationship where both of you benefit, so if you are thinking only about adding value to yourself and not adding value to the other person, you’ll need to reconsider. It’s important to be ready for the demands of friendship, if they have to be there for you, you have to be there for them too. If you are not ready to commit as much to maintaining good friendships, then simply maintain casual ones so you are not eventually labelled as selfish and all that. So, on campus if you’re at the right place at the right time, you might just find that friend unexpectedly.
1. Position Yourself for Meaningful Friendships
There are a number of places on campus that can easily help you in finding the right friends, below are some of those places.
2. Campus Groups
School clubs, groups be it musical, career or social could be good places to establish good friendships. One very good example of a group that can easily connect you with some other students is a discussion group. It happens to be academic and social, so it’s really a good one if you can harness it well.
3. Events on Campus
There are many events that take place on campus, events like musical concerts, inaugural lectures, orientations, festivals or sporting events are some of them. Being at one or more of such events could mean you meeting new faces, and you can engage people in conversations to kick start knowing them and if you flow together, you may just create new friendships.
4. Religious Organisations
Fellowships on campus, religious gatherings or programmes are great avenues to find like-minded students that you can be friends with.
5. Classes
Your classes at times might involve students from more than one department. If you happen to offer a course that’s from other departments too, you get to mingle with students from those departments and this can be another probable avenue for making good friends.
6. School/Class/Social Platforms Online
If you are the type that actively participates in forums and groups related to your class, department, faculty or school online, then you could even make friends online. If your online school pals get to know you in person in school or class, your online participation might just be a good place to move the conversation forward.
Other places include dormitories/hostel, gossip benches around the school, gym, etc.
Below are some other important tips to help you establish profitable friendships in college:
7. Be Yourself
Do not force yourself to act, talk, look, smile or dress in some way just to impress people and seem classy enough to attract friends. No, simply be your best self. Learn to be comfortable in your own skin, if you have the problem of inferiority complex and people notice it, some may not want to associate with you. So, learn to appreciate your own personality, values, background, lifestyle and other things about yourself first. Don’t be too needy in the search of a friend. Be so comfortable that at the times you happen to be alone, you’re still the confident, composed you.
8. Converse
Do not always keep to yourself, learn the art of communication. It’s alright when you don’t want to start a conversation with a person around you but when you want to initiate a conversation but you’re just too shy or short on confidence to do so, it shows you need to grow yourself more in conversing with people. You can ask usual or common questions to start the chat and go on from there. Learn the art of starting and sustaining conversations. You can even decide to get to class early and pick up a chat with your colleagues, try to create the familiarity, you can also request them to help you with something you want to do if they can.
9. Appear Neat and Decent
Be sure to be deliberate about your dress and looks. Don’t dress shabbily or display uncultured manners. Most students will prefer to have as a friend someone who looks presentable and won’t disgrace or embarrass them in public. So be sure to cultivate good dress sense and manners. Appearing well alone can make some persons admire and like you.
10. Turn Casual Relationships to Friendship
If you happen to have a roommate in your dorm, you can work on creating more meaningful intimacy between both of you if you want to. During group works, you can also pick interest in some people in your group and drive your interaction with them towards friendship. Other places like religious fellowships, you can harness by picking an interest in persons you relate with casually and try to establish good friendships.
11. Ensure Balance
You should not get so engrossed with having friends that you forget your primary purpose of being on the campus, it is important for you to create the necessary balance. More important is the fact that not everyone can be your friend, so choose wisely, don’t get involved with students of questionable character and lifestyle. Save yourself some trouble.
12. Have a Friend Who is More Outgoing Than You Are
Especially if you are an introvert, you may want to have as a friend someone who is an extrovert or simply more outgoing. He/she could help you not to keep so much to yourself or get too engrossed in your own world. Such a person may likely have other chains of friends which could well serve you to make new friends too.
13. Identify a Common Ground
When you meet someone you like, by finding more common grounds between you too, you might create better connection and flow. So, try to identify common grounds, in your opinions, lifestyle, approach to life and the likes.
14. Volunteer
By volunteering for jobs or community projects, you meet new people and you are also better chanced to make new friends.
15. Invite Colleagues for Events and Accept Invitations Too
You can take advantage of good programmes that you know about with intention to attend, invite some of your colleagues. When they invite you to programme as well, be courteous to accept after confirming such invitations are safe and healthy for you to honour.
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