Prior to arriving on campus, Weinberg freshman Ben O’Shaughnessy expected making friends to be hard, but he was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make genuine connections. A resident of Elder Hall, located on North Campus, O’Shaughnessy described the dorm as fairly social, and he said Northwestern has a lot of communities that promote outward social interaction.
While some may see the distance between the North and South Residential Areas as a social inconvenience, O’Shaughnessy said he sees it as a plus.
“Some people think that (campus is) more divided, but I think, honestly, if you put yourself out there, it’s something that you can really kind of take advantage of,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I think it’s really good to have that mix of social scenes, because I think it gives more people a chance to feel like they belong, if there’s more diverse communities.”
The separation, however, can make it difficult for some to form relationships outside of dorms and classes. Especially during harsh winters, the trek from one end of campus to the other can inhibit cross-campus interactions, some students said.
For McCormick freshman Calvin Mariano, having more central spaces would help promote connections with people one would not typically interact with.
“(I wish) there was a place where everybody went to hang out,” Mariano said. “Norris (University Center) is a place where a lot of people come to hangout, but if there was just a central area that everybody agreed to go, it’d be easy to talk to everybody.”
Still, NU has other opportunities for students to make connections. NU’s annual Wildcat Welcome orientation week gives freshmen and transfers the chance to meet ahead of the academic year.
While orientation provides students with many opportunities to interact — through icebreakers, introductory activities and academic orientation — turning these conversations into true friendships is a challenge for some.
For Medill junior David Sun, the connections he built during Wildcat Welcome remain a core part of his social life at NU. Now living off-campus, Sun said taking initiative becomes even more important.
“Everyone’s so busy at Northwestern that you do have to be sort of proactive with your friends,” Sun said. “Freshman fall, it was a lot easier because everyone was living in the same building, I was taking the same class with a lot of people. But as time goes on, you’ll have less of that. So it really is up to you to cultivate those relationships.”
Being socially proactive does not always have to be through grand gestures and complicated plans. It was through extracurriculars that Weinberg junior Cadence Hornsby was able to not only make friends, but to maintain relationships through continued collaborative projects.
Hornsby said she met many of those friends in student theater productions.
“Say, someone I met from the very first play I was in, wrote another play and asked me, ‘Hey, you should come to the audition,’ or a friend that I met in a pit was like, ‘Hey, there’s another show that needs, a clarinet or an oboe player, do you want to come be in this show with me?’ And it just branches out through there,” Hornsby said.
Beyond clubs and other organized ways to meet people, finding friends can come at unexpected moments, Sun said. Sometimes, actively searching for friends actually becomes counterproductive, he added.
“I feel like sometimes you don’t even have to search out for friends that hard,” Sun said. “Sometimes, we have sort of tunnel vision, if we’re just looking and trying to find friends, if that makes sense. Sometimes, I feel like the best friends I’ve made just happen randomly.”
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