There shouldn’t be pressure when it comes to finding friends in college

Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

There’s an unspoken pressure that you must arrive at college and immediately find your people.

Find the friends you’ll eat, study, go out and eventually look back on college with. We see it everywhere. Friend groups walking across campus together. Birthday dinners. Group pictures. Social media posts that make it seem like everyone has found their place.

And if you haven’t found yours yet, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong.

I used to think that way, too.

Before college, I was content with the people I had in my life. My senior year of high school brought me closer to my friends because we knew we were approaching graduation and our lives were about to change. Even now, many of those friendships remain some of the closest relationships in my life.

Then I went to college, and I felt like I needed to recreate that.

I wanted to find my people at Syracuse University. I tried. And when it didn’t happen as quickly or naturally as I expected, I found myself wondering if I was doing something wrong.

Then I went home for a break. Being home reminded me of something I’d somehow forgotten: I already had people.

I had beautiful friendships that’d survived distance, time and change. I realized I was trying so hard to find something I wasn’t actually missing. I’m privileged enough to miss people and be missed by them.

That realization changed how I approached college.

I still have friends at SU. I still meet new people, join organizations, participate in activities and build relationships. But I no longer feel like I need to find one specific group and immediately make it my entire world.

Maybe that’s the problem with how we talk about finding your people. We make it sound like there’s one group waiting somewhere on campus, and once you find them, you’ve finally made it.

But belonging doesn’t work that way.

Your people can be friends. They can be classmates, coworkers, teammates, club members or people you meet through a hobby. You can belong in multiple places, and you don’t have to belong in the exact same way everywhere.

Some people might be lucky enough to have five people in five different places. Some might have one person they’ve known for years. Some might have a small circle. Others might not find their closest friendships until their sophomore, junior or senior year.

None of those experiences is better than the other.

We also have to be careful about confusing fitting in with belonging.

Fitting in can mean changing yourself to be accepted. It can mean becoming quieter because the group is quiet, pretending to like something because everyone else does or molding your personality into whatever you think people will respond to.

I know what that’s like.

But belonging is different. Belonging is being able to show up as yourself and still feel valued. It requires effort, reciprocity, respect and loyalty, not a performance.

And social media doesn’t always make that distinction easy.

We see the big friend groups, the parties, the vacations and the perfectly coordinated pictures. What we don’t see are the disagreements, misunderstandings, awkward moments and complicated dynamics that exist behind those pictures. A large friend group isn’t automatically a happy one, just as a small social circle isn’t automatically a lonely one.

Maybe college would be easier if we stopped treating friendship like a race.

Instead of entering a new environment thinking we need to find our people, we should instead enter wondering who we’re going to meet.

Treat college like a networking event. Talk to people. Join the club you’ve never heard of. Sit next to someone new. Try the hobby you always thought looked interesting. Go to the event even if you don’t know anyone there. Make connections without immediately deciding whether someone is going to become your best friend.

Some connections will last a semester. Some will last four years. Some will last a lifetime. You don’t have to know which relationship is which when you meet someone.

And most importantly, don’t abandon yourself because you’re afraid of being alone.

There’s nothing wrong with not having a defined friend group. There’s nothing wrong with spending a Friday night by yourself or realizing the people you thought you needed aren’t for you. Your happiness shouldn’t depend on whether you’ve been accepted into someone else’s circle.

Finding your people has less to do with searching and more to do with living.

You meet people. You try things. You grow. You learn who you are and what you value. You stop forcing connections and stop measuring your worth by the size of your social circle.

And then, sometimes without even realizing it, you look around and think: “Oh. These are my people.”

There is no deadline for that realization.

Your people aren’t something you have to find by the end of orientation, your first semester or even your first year.

Let it happen naturally.

Because the best relationships aren’t always the ones you worked the hardest to find. Sometimes they’re the ones you eventually realize were worth finding.

Mira Anosike is a sophomore majoring in forensic science and psychology. She can be reached at manosike@syr.edu.

Published on August 30, 2026 at 10:16 pm