Finding Your Community in College: Five Simple Ways to Make Friends
by Elaine Fernandez Bravo
When you begin your journey in college, one of the biggest challenges you may face is how to find friends and form long-lasting relationships. People might tell you to go out there and socialize with others, but for some, it may not be that easy.
I wish that during my first year of college, people would have given me specific tips on how to build and find my community on campus. Now that I have graduated from UC Davis and started my full-time job, I am proud to share some tips that I discovered on my journey to finding my home-away-from-home on my college campus.
Finding your community is great and there is an added benefit of building your network that may support future endeavors in ways you can’t predict. Whether you are entering your first or last year of college, or are somewhere in between, I hope these tips help you make friends and find community on your college campus!
1. Be open to meeting new people
As a commuter student, finding friends was a struggle. I found attending events on campus was a great way to meet more people.
If you’re a first-year student on campus and live in a dorm or residential hall, one of the easiest ways to meet people (or for you to go to them) is to leave your door open. By leaving it open, you’re allowing people to pick up on indirect cues of them being welcome to enter your space and start a conversation.
2. Join a club or organization on campus
This tip cannot be emphasized enough! If you join a club or organization you’re interested in, making friends will become easier since you already have a shared interest or commonality. Attending the club or organization’s informational session, meetings, or social events can also help you connect with people.
Feel free to check out cultural clubs, Greek life, career-oriented clubs, intramural sports teams, and much more to find your people and make those connections. I joined Sigma Pi Alpha Sorority in the beginning of my college journey after finding out there were multicultural sororities and fraternities.
Getting out of my comfort zone and exploring their events has led to me finding amazing people to surround myself with. I’ve also gotten to grow professionally through holding leadership positions like financial chair and president!
3. Study at your school’s centers instead of the library
Studying at the library can be useful when trying to focus on your work but will serve you little to no purpose in making connections. Instead, try to go to one of your school’s community centers to study and eventually, you’ll keep seeing the same people come back which will in turn lead to either yourself or them starting a conversation!
At UC Davis we have Center for Chicanx and Latinx Academic Student Success (CCLASS), Center for African Diaspora Student Success (CADSS), Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), Student Recruitment and Retention Center (SRRC), and many more centers where students can feel free to study or relax with other students who may belong to the same community.
4. Attend on-campus events
Whether it’s attending an on-campus event that’s particular to the school you attend, your major, or some kind of orientation, make sure to try and show up! More likely than not, other students like yourself are showing up to these events in hopes that they’ll be able to meet new people and make new friends.
My sorority tables at many on campus events and we’ve discovered it’s a great way to attain resources and meet new people. Some events I recommend at UC Davis are Bienvenida, U.S. Sorority and Fraternity Council Showcases, Aggie Days, and quarterly Involvement Fairs. If you commute to campus, I highly recommend attending on-campus events. As a commuter myself, I find it’s the easiest way to meet people and socialize.
5. Obtain an on-campus job
If you get a job on campus, chances are that you’ll meet other students like yourself that work there too. With time, it’s likely that through working with one another and getting to know each other more, bonds will be formed!
Elaine Fernandez Bravo is a Bay Area native, a Wave-Maker alum, and a graduate of UC Davis, after double majoring in managerial economics and sociology. She enjoys being involved and is a Management Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT) Fellow, Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) Scholar, and President of Sigma Pi Alpha Sorority, Inc. She loves getting the opportunity to give back and support Making Waves in all the ways she can just like they’ve always supported her.
ABOUT MAKING WAVES Education FOUNDATION
At Making Waves, we are committed to educational equity. Making Waves Education Foundation is a Bay Area nonprofit that supports Making Waves Academy – a public charter school with more than 1,100 5th through 12th grade students – and leads college and career programming with more than 430 college students.
Knowing the opportunities that come with a college degree, we partner with historically underrepresented and underserved students to help make college affordable and graduation attainable. Centering the journeys of our students, our personalized approach includes college and career coaching, scholarships, and financial planning.
Our alumni network includes more than 730 college graduates, who earn their degrees and land jobs at more than twice the rate of their first-generation, low-income peers, with 85% graduating debt-free.
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