By Shira Kramer, Managing Editor
Coming into Stern last year, I knew very few people. Of the people I did know, I wouldn’t have called them close friends. I also knew that many people coming from the tri-state area or straight out of seminary would have an advantage that I couldn’t have as a transfer student from Baltimore. To put it simply, I was scared. How could I make friends when everyone already seemed to have their group?
My first semester was pretty brutal. On top of feeling incredibly lonely, I was juggling seven classes and extracurriculars. I didn’t have the time or the energy to put myself out there and make friends. I constantly felt like I was failing because I didn’t have it all together. When I talked to my family about my situation, they reminded me that it was only the beginning of college. However, by this time last year, I was still not happy with my social life at Stern. The ‘beginning’ felt endless and my hope seemed to fade as the semester progressed.
In addition to my fears about making friends in a new school, I was scared of losing the connections I’d made with my friends at home. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to keep up the momentum we had cultivated for 19 years. We were all parting ways and forging our own paths. Looking back, I can’t say my fears were entirely unfounded. I did lose friends from home and some of the friendships that I kept grew weaker due to the physical distance between us.
The cherry on top was that we didn’t have the same winter break so I couldn’t even reconnect with them at home. I watched on Instagram as they all got together while I was still in New York for finals. When I went back to Baltimore for break, I realized that things had changed. If I couldn’t pick up where I left off with my friends in high school, I needed to find common ground with my current classmates.
I used winter break to wallow in self-pity and then I picked myself back up. As I walked from Moynihan Train Hall to Brookdale Hall on my way back from break, I decided that my negative attitude wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead of feeling sorry for myself like I had gotten so good at doing, I began to look for friends in the places I had already familiarized myself with. I knew I wasn’t going to become the girl that can sit down with a bunch of random people in the cafeteria and make casual conversation all of a sudden. I started by deepening my relationships with my roommates, my classmates and people in the extracurriculars I was already involved in. Making friends this way proved to be easier than I thought.
Since then, I’ve made friends in other places too. It only takes a few connections to feel comfortable at a new school. Now, I am able to look back at the hardships I faced last year and learn from them.
Every semester is a new opportunity, a fresh start. If the fall didn’t go the way you expected (regardless of what went wrong), you can begin anew. Learn from your challenges and grow from them. Because if you don’t, there is no one else who can convince you to change your attitude besides yourself.
Every year, we look forward to our three main breaks: summer, winter and spring. Yet, how many people actually take a break when it’s given to us? For most students, breaks from school are used to advance our careers, build our resumes or for chesed opportunities. But, we need to take a break for the sake of our mental health. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the girls that will hate it when you come back to school after volunteering for two weeks because you’re still cranky from the first semester.
Use winter break as a time to recharge. It’s okay to lie in bed all day and watch Netflix. It’s okay to eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Give yourself grace. We’ve all worked hard this past semester. Make winter break a real break and come into January forgiving yourself for any shortcomings you might be blaming yourself for now.
Photo Caption: New York City in the winter
Photo Credit: Unsplash