At this point, us freshmen have been on Brown’s campus for just over a month. We’ve had to quickly adapt to the stresses of Shopping Period, constantly-disappearing points, and our first midterms (halp). And on top of the anxieties of class, we have to establish a whole new network of friends.
One of the beautiful things about Brown is it tends to admit only a handful of students from each high school, which creates a diverse student body. But that also takes away the safety net of high school friendships. We’re on our own. And for those of us who are not particularly gregarious (i.e. me), the sheer terror of the ice cream social was merely the first hurdle.
The first month felt like a mini version of “Groundhog Day,” where each student had the exact same conversation with people every day about where they were from and what they wanted to concentrate in. It seemed like those conversations would never go beyond that–like there was no way to instantaneously connect with other students and understand each other completely. How could these relationships take shape so quickly?