Are there cliques in college

Whenever you start a new journey, whether it involves a new job or a new school, you will always be taken out of your comfort zone. With my admission transfer to the University of Southern California, I begin a quest, once again diving into the college lifestyle on a much larger scale and searching for a new comfort zone.

This time, living on campus, I will be forced to socialize with others and perhaps meet some of the coolest people. I am also changing majors, so I will engage with a different group of peers, which will be beneficial to my growth as a student. If you are in high school and are graduating soon, I urge you to look at college social circles in a positive light, because everyone is part of one regardless if they put a label on it or not.

If you are in college and are struggling with finding a social circle, be more involved. Join a club or greek life, get a job on campus, study abroad—the possibilities are endless. Erum Jaffrey. Erum is a junior international relations major at the University of Southern California. As a representative for the Muslim South Asian diaspora, she hopes to bring a voice for underrepresented minority women in the news media. Come here often?

Love Stories Work and Money Travel. Wellness Health Mind. Follow The Tempest Facebook. Fremd High School guidance counselor Antonette Minniti said the prevalence of social media can lead students to compare themselves to one another even more than students of past generations.

The comparison never ends. There has been a marked shift toward inclusion on high school campuses, a number of local counselors said. Nicole Capalbo, a softball coach and guidance counselor at Palatine High School, said the prevalence of social media connects most members of a high school class together. And as students feel pressure to join more clubs, activities and sports than previous generations, more students interact with a greater diversity of classmates.

Both said they find the campus very inclusive. Education about topics such as bullying and mental health makes teens less likely to exclude others. She laughed as she described their reaction. Selfhood is dynamic. Because of this, I believe closeness comes when people both recognize that the other is multifaceted and are willing to explore the different sides of a personality. But first, you need to believe you can be close to others. If you believe that people are dynamic, that you can be close to them in your own way, others will feel at ease to express their dynamic self and be close to you as well.

Sure, I might connect more with certain friends than others. For example, I can connect with one friend emotionally better than I can with another friend, with whom I connect better intellectually.

They are each complex, and I feel close to them knowing that they know I am complex as well. I might not have sought out many of my housemates as friends from the get-go. But a mutual appreciation and understanding grows with time. So, even though it might seem like people are closer to each other than you are to anyone in your first week or months, really, you are not behind in any way. Just keep at it. At the end of the day, remember that everyone else shares the same qualms you have.

The independent student newspaper of The University of Chicago since Toggle navigation. I have met lots of people through friends and friends of friends, it's fun. I hang out with students from my first major, my current major, completely unrelated majors, the clubs that I'm in, and people I've met randomly at parties throughout the year. I was a freshman in this past year and a lot of people I met were Greek--but I didn't know they were Greek until a few weeks after we met.

When you go to state uni's, a lot of people are there only to hang out with their friends. A lot of them were friends in high school. They may make friends that are just like their friends in high school, but most of the time state uni kids are cliquey. Those tend to be harder to get into. You're basically going to school with kids like you if you go to school at your state's university.

Dunno if that helps.