<p>Sorry, this is a long post. I really need some advice though, if anyone is patient enough to read through it. I'm a freshman at Princeton. It's two full months into the school year, and I still hate life here. In the beginning of the year, I was uncomfortable with the transition to college life, but I assumed that was just because I hadn't been here that long yet. But it's now officially been two whole months into the year, and I'm still as miserable as I was on Day 1 (or maybe day 7 when i realized how hard it is to make friends).</p>
<p>This has been an incredibly rocky transition for me. Academically, I'm doing perfectly fine. I've been getting good grades (or at least, I'm content with the grades I've been getting), but everything about social life at Princeton has been unexpectedly difficult for me. I've come to the disturbing realization that nobody here - and I mean nobody - ever just hangs out and watches TV in a common room. At all the other colleges I visited, the dorms would have smallish, social, cohesive floors where the kids would hang out and get to know each other by dint of their proximity. Princeton, first of all, has no such small cohesive floor structure - we're an entire residential college, not a small floor-wide group of people. And there is no culture of knocking on somebody's door to hang out - doors are closed all the time, and people hole up inside of their rooms and work on homework ALL. DAY. LONG. How do you get to know people without the social support system of a fun dorm? (and for the record, I have joined a bunch of clubs, but by a combination of the fact that I live in forbes and that the everybody is always doing schoolwork, I find little opportunity to hang out with them outside of club practices).</p>
<p>I came from a high school where I spent 7 and a half hours every day at school hanging out with my closest friends, and then I would go to swim practice, do my homework, and go to sleep. I come to Princeton, and, first and foremost, I know nobody here. That's alright, I tell myself, I'll make friends! That's the point of college. But a bunch of my classes are lectures, and I find extremely little opportunity to actually talk and get to know people. So I don't really have friends in my classes, which only last ~2 -3 hours a day. Then after classes, I don't know who to hang out with. More importantly, I've come to realize that people DON'T hang out at all in the afternoon after classes. They do more studying. I went from spending almost every waking minute of my time with people I knew really closely and who cared about me, to spending almost every waking moment of my time with either nobody at all, or the vague acquaintances I made here. How do people function here when all they do all afternoon is study, and all they do all night is study, and they never hang out with friends? I don't understand how people can develop a comfortable social lifestyle that way. I'm so incredibly frustrated. What am I doing wrong?</p>
<p>Thus, after looking at way too many of my friends' Facebook pictures and seeing how they're having the time of their life in college, I've recently begun toying with the idea of transferring. I hate myself for thinking it. I feel like a wimp for not being able to handle this, and I don't know if it's something I'm doing that's keeping me from being comfortable here, or if it's something about Princeton. I would tend to think the latter.</p>
<p>So should I consider transferring? Or will it be just as hard to adjust wherever I go? Did any other people who went to Princeton have these same troubles with adjusting? And how long is this process supposed to take? Why are my friends at other schools having so much fun, while I'm missing out?</p>
<p>:( I hate forfeiting the idea of graduating with a princeton degree. But I'm so incredibly, unexpectedly miserable here. Please help.</p>