To make the transition to a new life in a new city a bit smoother, UKrant‘s student editors give their top tips over the next three weeks. Today: don’t worry about making friends right away.
When I first moved here, like many, I did not have a lot of friends. At first, of course, I went to every party, every event, every get-together I could get myself invited into. However, while I had many friendly conversations with people, I still felt hesitant to call them friends.
Even of those relationships that seemed well on the way to blossom into friendships, most wilted. These kinds of fizzled-out relationships are easy to focus on and see as failures.
I wish I had realised earlier that it’s alright to not have many friends immediately. Everything in those first months was in flux, and that was okay. I was in a new environment, figuring out who I was. With that insight, I started to see a conversation with a stranger not as a game to be won by securing a friend, but as a mutual exploration to find out what we are looking for in a friendship.
These people I talked to and who didn’t become close friends were not failed interactions, but little successes in finding out who I was. And it was only when I learned to understand myself better that I found the people that I needed. I realised that when it comes to friendships, it’s the quality that counts, not the quantity.
Sometimes things take time, and that’s perfectly alright.
This article was first published on 30 August, 2023.