Welcome to the jungle

To all freshmen,

Congratulations. You’ve made it to college, successfully moved in and are now parent-free. So bring on the booze, hot random hookups and a whole new friend group right?

Maybe.

But probably not. And I’m here to tell you that’s OK. The first few weeks of college are filled with a lot of pressure.

You’ll want to find a party and get your socialite career kicked into high gear right away, but it doesn’t always work like that. Immediately finding awesome friends who invite you to awesome parties with awesome booze is the exception, not the rule.

So don’t fret. You will have nights where you listen to “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and secretly cry so your roommate doesn’t see. You will stay in and watch all the seasons of Arrested Development in a week, then move through the complete series of Strangers with Candy in even less time.

And you’re still normal.

College is a great experience and you’ll love your time here, but you have to ease into things. You might have to make a few less-than-stellar friendships and endure some weird trips to the Indiana Memorial Union’s bowling alley with them, but this will eventually lead to real friends.

How do I know all of this?

I was the master loner at the start of my freshman year. I’ve gone through all of the above and worse to the tune of four hours on YouTube watching everything from old Britney Spears videos to dancing grandmas. Pretty low.

But once you hit bottom, you can only go up.

Once you get through the weird stuff, you’ll have great stories to help you bond with the friend group that really matters, and you can all laugh at how heinous Welcome Week actually was.

There’s no harm in trying to talk to people during the insane line for CultureFest, but if they don’t respond, you’ll still meet other people. Let’s be real, there are a lot of people on this campus, and some of them will be killjoys.

But stick it out and you’ll find like-minded people.

The biggest advice I can give you is to shed the fear of judgment you developed in high school. Do whatever you want. Make yourself a new person. If someone cares too much, forget them.

Do whatever clubs, sports, groups and jobs you want.

It’s time for you to do you.

If the kid who has “break dancing grannies” in his YouTube search can be socially active and love college, you can too.

­—sjostrow@indiana.edu