Making Friends: An Art to Learn
Making friends is an art that is worth learning by every human being in our normal lives. Man being a social animal, need companions near him or her for a good and complete life. It can be admitted that it's not an easy task to make friends bearing in mind the difference in personality that exist between one individual to another. It's indeed dependent on one's age, gender and the personality that one individual has. Personality is the greatest determinant of the capability of one to make friends regardless of the level of education he or she is in (Snyder and Smith,1986).
College and University: Perfect Avenues to Make Friends
College and universities are some of the easiest avenues that can be utilized to make friends. There are numerous individuals that have a similar age group, academic education, and class arguably. In the university, also there are many meeting points such as lecture halls, common units, lessons, and projects that people handle as a team hence making it easier to meet and socialize.
Making Friends Through the Internet
Nowadays it is even possible to make friends through the internet. In many colleges, there is a free availability of internet services that are meant for research but it can also be used for this noble practice of making friends. People are able to search for new friends, confidants and also able to connect will all kinds of people worldwide since the world has become a global village (Parks and Floyd, 1996). Use of the media is widely used by the individuals that are known to be quite shy. This enables them to relay what they are unable to talk verbally. For such characters, the university has avenues that can help one improve his/her social skills. These include counseling services that are available, finding friends that have similar weaknesses and try to help one another and improving oneself through reading materials that give guidance on this subject.
Ways to Make Friends in College or University
Since every person must be having social goals despite their personality, the following are some of the ways that one in university or college can apply and make him/herself better in terms of making friends. Initially, one must be willing to take up the challenge since it is an involving exercise in terms of time and also money (Wentzel and Erdley, 1993). This will result to get involved in such activities that don't interest you always for the sake of friendship. It is important to appreciate that every person in college is new probably as you are, and were equally qualified to come to the university. The next idea is getting out of your normal room and visit some other avenues like the library, cafeteria, neighbors in the same hostel and school shop where there are opportunities for meeting people. Joining a club, the Christian Union or Muslim society and other gatherings in the university. As one interacts he or she is able to create new links and make good friends.
Conclusion
Indeed, friends are an important part of one's life. Friends made in school are to a large extent, life-long friends. They are a source of both good and bad memories in our life's in our young age and help us live life's that are free from worries and fear since there are people we can associate with. The friends we keep will to some extent determine our performance in school. (Wentzel, Barry, and Caldwell, 2004). We must, therefore, be attractive, sociable, caring for us to attract and keep others near us for a better living (Hartup, 1992).
References
Hartup, W.W., 1992. Having Friends, Making Friends, and Keeping Friends: Relationships as Educational Contexts. ERIC Digest.
Parks, M.R. and Floyd, K., 1996. Making friends in cyberspace. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 1(4), p.JCMC144.
Snyder, M. and Smith, D., 1986. Personality and friendship: The friendship worlds of self-monitoring. In Friendship and social interaction (pp. 63-80). Springer, New York, NY.
Wentzel, K.R. and Erdley, C.A., 1993. Strategies for making friends: Relations to social behavior and peer acceptance in early adolescence. Developmental psychology, 29(5).
Wentzel, K.R., Barry, C.M. and Caldwell, K.A., 2004. Friendships in middle school: Influences on motivation and school adjustment. Journal of educational psychology, 96(2), p.195.
