 Today's video is going to be the next in my series where I talk to you guys about how to prepare for college. In today's video we're going to be talking about how to make the most of your first few weeks in college, specifically as it relates to making friends in a new environment. Those of you that don't know, my name is Josh Visa. I'm a rising sophomore at Yale University studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This channel mainly consists of Yale vlogs, sit down videos like this, sometimes some student interviews. I've done college application stuff in the past. If any of that interests you, feel free to subscribe. You will not regret it. Anyways, I've gotten a lot of comments from some of you guys who are pretty nervous about starting college. You don't know if you're going to be able to adjust to the new environment or find a solid friend group and I completely understand. Hopefully after watching this video you will be a lot more comfortable with the whole situation. College can be scary sometimes but if you take full advantage of every opportunity you have an absolute blast. So let's get into my tips. First of all you need to accept a simple fact that no one going into their freshman year of college really knows each other. Obviously there's going to be those groups of kids from high school that decided to go to the same college but normally to be completely honest those groups kind of break apart after freshman year. For the most part everyone's a little bit nervous about kind of being immersed and do a new environment where they don't know anyone and they're nervous about meeting people and that's completely normal. Everyone is trying to make friends just like you are. Everyone's in the same boat. This means that the first couple weeks the whole social scene is going to be very malleable as everyone's kind of meeting a ton of people, finding who they click with and kind of developing those friend groups. This may sound scary to some of you but let me tell you this is one of the best parts about college. If I could go back and do it again I of course I would. Normally you have like freshman orientation stuff for a couple days too at the beginning of the year so you don't even have to worry about classes so you can dedicate that entire time to meeting new people, adjusting to your new environment and just kind of getting prepared for the entire year. You're probably wondering how exactly am I supposed to go about doing that. Don't worry, I got you. Here's my first tip and it's probably the most important thing I could tell you in this situation. You're going to be a little more assertive than you normally are in this situation. You're going to have to push yourself a tad out of your comfort zone and the biggest thing is you're going to need to be the first person to introduce yourself in these social situations. Like I said earlier, no one knows each other. If you're the first person to make a move you have already established yourself among your new classmates. Now where should you apply this tip? Well you can do it at orientation events, RA meetings, dorm or floor get-togethers, parties, probably mainly just parties because there are a lot of them during your first days in college. Take advantage of that. So that's my general tip but let's get more into these specifics. Let's start with your dorm. There is about a 90% chance that the people that you're rooming with your sweet mates or maybe the people on your floor will become your core friend group for at least the first semester. Try to get to know everyone on your floor. You'll probably be in the same RA group together anyway so that's a great opportunity to do that. Also try to find a buddy for the first couple of days whether this is your roommate or somebody else you have become friends with on your floor. Walking in the room with somebody by your side will make these occasional awkward situations a little bit easier. You may not become super good friends with your roommate. You may even absolutely despise them and that's completely okay. You have an entire floor of people to meet with and connect with by the end of the year because you're living together the entire year so I guarantee you there's someone there that you can connect with and become friends with. Let's say you hate everyone on your floor. It's just absolutely horrible. You don't connect with any of them. Don't worry but you're going to have to look to other methods and I recommend that you look to other methods anyways because it's great to get to know a lot of different people outside of your dorm too. Every freshman will probably be in at least one or two big lecture classes for their first or second semester just because a lot of the intro classes have a lot of students taking them. So this is a great opportunity to meet new people and be in a big group. This may be a big class but study groups will gradually begin to form throughout the year. I encourage you to get to know the people sitting next to you and begin to start building the study group. This is not only super important with succeeding in classes because I'll tell you collaborating is the number one way to succeed in college classes but also it will be a great boost to your social life because chances are you're going to have some of these kids in your future classes. The last big place to find friends your freshman year is in extracurriculars. You'll probably be flooded with requests to join a bunch of different extracurriculars your first couple of weeks. I know I was when I went into like the Yale extracurricular fair. You just get handed a piece of papers. You get put on an email list. Hundreds of groups you can join and this this this is at every single college. There's extracurriculars for everything. I recommend that you find three to five things that you're interested in and start going to meetings. Whether this is a club sports team, a music ensemble, Greek life, whatever it is. This is one of the best ways to meet new people outside of your door. Also extracurriculars are just a great thing to do in college regardless because college isn't all about working. You got to have some fun there too. All right. I think that sums up my tips for making the most of your first weeks of college and making friends. 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