Friendships for Entire College Experience Ride on Week One

Clark University’s Week One is filled with vital new information for incoming First-Years. However, a majority of the orientation experience is spent getting to know classmates and soul mates.

It can be difficult going through the initial steps of the college experience without friends to lean on. The four years of higher education are a rigorous balance of work, sleep, nutrition, and crop tops. If a student has friends, he can briefly converse with them over a slice of pizza or while the professor’s back is turned. If these friends do not exist, that pizza will be awfully lonely.

The Freudian Slip found First-Year student Sarah Coture (‘19), who was sitting disheartened on the 3rd floor of the library last Sunday night. “What I didn’t understand was that after Week One, there is literally no time to make friends. Now I have no one, and I don’t have any time to meet people. I just wish I had sat down with more strangers at breakfast.”

Of course, new students are not completely left alone when finding their college friends. Clark University attempts to pair like-minded people into each Week One PA group. As an additional resource, peer advisors are there to advise students on which of their peers are cool enough and could be valuable friends.

Natalie Newman (‘17), acapella campus celeb and peer advisor, describes herself as ‘quite sufficient’ at her job. Newman told The Freudian Slip,“I have a 94% success rate in forming friendships between hip first-years. I even hooked up two couples last year that are still together. How about that?”

Still, for the Class of 2019, none of this matters anymore. Week One is over and all potential friends that can be made have been made. For students like Coture, there is always graduate school.

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