<p>One thing that has always got me excited about college is that you get to totally reinvent yourself. With meeting new people and leaving the old ones behind, you now have the chance to be a completely different person than you were in high school. And coming from an extremely small town, my graduating class was fairly small. So being part of the K-12 club, I was labeled as the "quiet/awkward kid" from an early age all the way to my senior year. This label is the exact thing I wanted to destroy and burn at the steak. And I believe I may have tried to reinvent myself a little too early because throughout my senior year, basically all of the friends I had for a long time ended up not wanting to have anything to do with me. I don't know if it's just me being the one that's immature or them, its just that I felt like I was on a different level of maturity than they were. The things they would talk about and laugh at I thought was dumb and mean. I tried finding new friends but couldn't find any. Now all I feel I have left is my girlfriend, my family, and a feeling of isolation. I guess what I'm wanting to say is that I feel I have lost my ability to make new friends, not just be nice to people, but have a lasting relationship with them. Do you think I will be able to do this? And how?</p>
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I do think that the latter is almost always a good thing to change friends for and the first thing can usually be a good reason to make a change depending on the situation. Don’t worry about your high school friends. You’re going to college in a few months and will hardly see them any more.</p>
<p>You know how to make friends. You did it at least once before in your life. College will be different, but something that is really helpful to note: Everyone is new. Freshman year is great. Almost anyone you strike up a conversation with in the first few weeks is going to be thrilled to talk to you because everyone wants to make friends. Just start by meeting people on your hall. Go to interest meetings for clubs you’d like to join. Strike up conversations with people in your classes. Just put yourself in social situations.</p>
<p>I came from a k-12 school with a graduating class of 43. I know how different it can be going from a small school to college. (My college is 20,000+ undergrads). I used to be one of those people saying “How can the graduates from my school go to those huge state schools? I just don’t understand it.” And now I’m here and it’s really not that weird.</p>
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<p>This is definitely true and was great for me, because I’m an introvert. The first couple of days, literally everybody is in the same exact boat as you. It’s also nice because there’s no expectations-- you’re going to talk to so many people but only a fraction of them will “stick” and become real friends. I guarantee you as long as you put yourself out there a little bit, everything will fall into place. You’re naturally going to start running into the same people over and over, and then there’s your roommate. Things will work out-- don’t stress over it too much and just let things happen.</p>