They hold hands because they’ve become one identity

Remember NSOP? Wasn’t that a simpler, jollier time? Didn’t you find it so much easier to meet new people and form connections? Those days are long gone – now, many of us have retreated into our own small groups, setting aside congeniality for comfort. We explore this phenomenon through the voice of a frustrated first-year student who tries to navigate their way out of the “slump”. 

There was once joy in my life: I recall, during pre-orientation, actually making an effort to befriend people—and succeeding! And when I tried to be personable or interesting it wasn’t really hard because I was, at the time, personable and interesting. It was easy to care about other people and their opinions, to exchange phone numbers and Snapchat accounts and interest in each other’s futures. I frolicked with my new friends on South Lawn, drank out of the fountains on Low Plaza, and sometimes, would lay my head on Alma’s lap as she stroked my hair and told me everything would be alright. What a beautiful time!

Alas, those days are far behind me. Nowadays, I deter any would-be friends by snarling, crossing my eyes, or maintaining polite but distant body language. I am completely and totally drained of the social energy it takes to form new relationships, mostly because I am entirely too entrenched in my current friend group.

There is no space for newcomers, and no way to exit. We’re like a pack of feral wolves, or a giant blob that consumes smaller blobs. Or it’s more like I’m the small blob and friendship – rather, Columbia – is the giant blob, and I’m being sucked into something unhealthy that I can’t understand. Or like we’re an amoeba that splits perversely and recombines, each component never fully distinct (something tells me that’s not how science works) from one another. I’m not sure where I’m going with all these similes, but the point is that we’ve somehow basically all morphed into the same entity. It’s incestuous, creepy, and at this point, it seems to be unavoidable.

Sometimes our skin sticks together, or it looks like we’re quadruplets in Polaroid photographs (despite our varying genders and ethnicities), or we spend three days straight just looking at each other and not speaking, but comprehending. It’s weird! Tonight, we’re going to an event and two of my friends are wearing outfits from my closet because why not — and I feel like they don’t really exist anymore. Are they just figments of my imagination, or am I one of theirs?

You can imagine why it’s difficult to muster up the energy to talk to someone in lecture who you doubt you’ll see again, or that girl you met during Days on Campus who doesn’t really make eye contact with you anymore. It’s too late; you’re in too deep.

Anyway, all this was just to say that it’s hard to get out of that slump as a first-year! Just hang in there — you’ll get through it!

Perfectly diverse via Shutterstock