All my life, people told me that I was shy. I never really knew what they meant. In high school I would raise my hand in class and I made friendly conversation with my desk partner. The only times I was really shy was when I was in a large group but, I mean, who doesn’t get intimidated by large groups of people?

Throughout high school, I had many friends and, although it took me a while to get close to them, once I did, they were there for life. So, when I got to college, I thought everything would be the same. I thought that I would meet a group of girls during orientation week and we would immediately become best friends.

Before I got to college, I started talking to a few people in a similar major to me. I figured that this would be good because once school started, I would already have broken the ice between my new friends and me.

Once I got to school, I did have an initial group of friends to talk to. For the first few weeks, we hung out all the time, but after a while we started to realize that we had less in common with each other. Each person began to branch out and make new friends, eventually leaving me to feel as if I was the only one who hadn’t found her “clique”.

By this point, it felt like everybody had already found their group of best friends and that I wasn’t invited to join them. I’m sure this was not the case, as it is common for the first people you meet in college to not end up being your friends, but I wasn’t aware of this. I was too shy to go up to the group of girls in the cafeteria and ask to sit with them, too nervous to go to a club meeting by myself, and wouldn’t dream of approaching people in the lobby.

I spent the first year of college in my room, generally feeling like I would never fit in. However, by my second-year things started to turn around, and with a few key tips, I started to branch out of my comfort zone and began to make genuine connections with those around me.