Latest / Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship / #177 - The Myth of Instant College Friends (Dr. Janice McCabe)

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#177 - The Myth of Instant College Friends (Dr. Janice McCabe) · Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship

• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dear Nina Conversations about Friendship.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am your host Nina Badsen.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have been writing about Friendship for over a decade, podcasting about it for over four years.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today's episode is for the parents of the college kids.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also for the college kids.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And really, it is for anybody who has struggled to make friends.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: My guest is Professor Janice McCabe.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has her second book out and it's called Making Keeping Losing Friends, how campuses shape college students networks.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Professor McCabe has been studying.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, making friends, yes, keeping friends, but particularly the structure of the college institution.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is something to think about.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: if you're a parent of a younger student who is going to be thinking of actually about where to go to school because some schools have this more in mind than others.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: They think a lot about what Professor McCabe and I will be talking about which is the friendship markets that are available to you in college.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some schools do a better job of directing kids towards those of having certain kinds of orientation activities and this isn't just about the size of the school.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even a really large school can be very mindful of how they help students acclimate to an entirely new environment.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Either way, whatever the institution does or doesn't, it is of course still on you as the individual, the student now, not the parent, it is on the student to figure out what quote unquote friendship markets, which is something that we speak about quite a bit in the episode, which ones are open, which ones are closed to, it's not the right fit, because the people in that group, whether it's a group of friends or an activity, just
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: aren't emotionally open right now to you.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There isn't chemistry.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of that we don't necessarily get into the nitty gritty of chemistry.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's like a whole separate thing.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are talking here about being aware of when the fit is just not happening.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't feel you're being invited to things.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't feel like you can be yourself.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're not enjoying yourself in these environments.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you are bumping up against what seems like an open
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely experienced that in my life.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've talked about it many times in the podcast.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned it briefly in the episode.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most people have it.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would be shocked if somebody could not think of a single time when they thought they would be a fit somewhere and it really turned out they weren't.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think what helps people make friends despite that is how quickly they are willing to move on from that.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you are always focused on the people who didn't like you, the people who didn't accept you as opposed to who else is out there, that is what is going to make the difference because something you can do about the ones that have already made it clear they're not interested.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to keep going.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we talk a lot about different students that Professor McCabe has worked with, but the book itself has so many more details.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we could only really get into so much in these 30 minute episodes.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you have a kid in your life who is home whenever you're listening to this winter break, the summer and the next year of school is going to start or you have a older high school student who is thinking about where to go to school.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are things to be
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: as we say in the episode, there is no time in life when you do not need to have some sort of friendship muscle that is functioning.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Things change, your life circumstances change, you move towns, the people that live in the town that you've been living with.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: for a long time no longer feel like a good fit for any number of reasons.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get divorced, you change job, so many reasons I couldn't possibly name them all, why you might need to make new friends or why you might need to work on keeping the friends you have.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, today we're focusing on college kids for the most part, but I think the lessons are applicable to everyone.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Janice McCabe is an associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth College, the president of the sociology of education association and the author of two books.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: let's get to it.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Janice.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dierneena.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So wonderful to be with you today.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking to parents and they're young adults.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're, I guess they're adult students who might be struggling to be making friends on college and maybe they always heard like, oh, these are going to be the best four years of your life and you're going to love college and they spent all of senior year of high school just in grossed in the whole admissions conversation where you're going and now they're there
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: like they hoped.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your book focuses on several things, but one big one is friendship markets, and I wonder if we could start there as a place that maybe people are not seeing the potential, or not switching when they should.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is a friendship market?
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: other times when it seems quite challenging.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of that is personality, some is luck, some is skills, but friendship markets really draws attention to the structural aspects to it.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's an initial friendship market that opens up in college when first-year students are first arriving when people are particularly open to making friends.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's one of those periods where
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've even said it a lot of times on the show that college is a time that people make friends more easily.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not everyone, I should really remind the audience more of that, but more so than when you move to a new town in your 30 years old.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes that can be really hard because it's maybe unclear where the open markets are, whereas when everyone is in college, I've talked about freshman energy and those first couple weeks of school and people are open.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the whole place is a big market, but then what?
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you make it smaller?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: First year energy freshman energy definitely is a good way to capture that idea of the initial friendship market.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are also times later on where friendship markets opened up.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I just had a student come to my office because in addition to being a sociology professor, I'm also a residential house professor here at Dartmouth we call it.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of students, not just in my classes, but in my house community who come and talk to me about friendship.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: students are doing a lot of comparison to the ideas that they have of other people and this idea that everyone else has friends except for me is something I hear quite often and when it's something you hear quite often you know that it can't quite be true that everyone else their friendships are better so it feels like sometimes to those students that if you don't make friends right at the
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So with markets, you have buyers and sellers and that idea is really important so people are open to both making and being friends in these times when there are markets and it's often invisible until you go into a setting and you think you're going to make friends and then really you notice other people are interested in it.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've experienced it as an adult going into a PTO meeting
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And thinking, oh, you know, this could be a good place to make friends, but a lot of people there already have friends, so the market for the most part isn't open versus I just saw an advertisement in my kids newsletter for their elementary school that they had an activity for new parents for the PTO.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I thought, oh, there is an idea of what is a friendship market.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But back to college, friendship markets are clubs and organizations, classes can also be, but not always.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's part of the trick is being attentive to when people are open to making friends.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the beginning of certain terms.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: the beginning of a semester, so coming up if kids haven't made good friends, it's not like hope is lost for this fall, but January would be another really good opportunity when classes are starting again, maybe there's some new people on the dorm, clubs are looking for new members again, there's more of that potential for open markets.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: When somebody is new to school, even new to a city, because as always, like I do try to extrapolate to all listeners, even though we can't always in every episode, I agree that the market concept and being open to who's
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: buying who's open.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the open market.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have the same experience I've talked about a thousand times moving to Minneapolis and just assuming right away that people around my age, you know, you talk in your book and how do you pronounce the word?
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never say right.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would just say and regulating those people who are like you.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: people who are muffling, muffly, okay, I didn't want to say incorrectly.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is sort of a natural place to start even though it would be nice in this world if we started always with people who are different from us and I do think there's so much value.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've done whole episodes on being friends with people who are different from you.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, if you're in a whole new place, it is natural, if there's something natural about it.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I move here, I look for people just like me,
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it just didn't click at first.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was really bitter about it for a long time and I think I probably missed out on some opportunities at first at what would have been other open markets because I was walking around with a little chip on my shoulder that that one particular market, one group let's say, wasn't as open to me as I've grown both in maturity as a person and in my knowledge of understanding how friendships form.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get that most of those people already had a lot of friends grew up here, went to camp together and nobody's entitled I was not entitled to their friendship and their time because we're around the same age and we have some things in common when you spend a lot of time being better that people weren't open to you you're like wasting time
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: time and opportunity is how I see it.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a college context I understand how that would be very difficult because you really see these groups forming quickly.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The tech groups, they're just fast.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do people talk to you about the tech scripts forming when they come talk to you as an advisor?
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They definitely do.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one hard thing about those tech groups for people is it's really clear who's in and who's out.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's not that blurriness like there was when we were younger and you were unsure whether you were indicted to something that's really clear whether you're part of that group or not.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what would you tell someone who comes to you and says,
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: they try joining a club because I assume that would be like the first thing you would say is did you join something else?
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't make friends on their freshman floor.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's say I know you guys have like houses and Dartmouth but I'm thinking about like my college experience and one of my kids so far there is the freshman dorm and a lot of groups get formed there and they start big usually.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It might be a touch of even 20 kids.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: course over time it's going to get smaller.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember telling my son that like it's not going to be 20 kids in three months.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just not as that's not plausible even to always get together and take hours and stuff with 20 kids is so it starts to get smaller.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But so let's say they didn't make friends in their dorm.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The roommate was just okay.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't make friends in the first club.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you got for them?
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: keep trying because there's always more clubs, there's always more classes, there's always these future opportunities.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it can feel hard because you can take it personally, but to me one of the really wonderful things about the friendship market idea is that rather than blaming yourself and thinking, right, I'm just awkward, I'm just introverted, or blaming other people for not being open.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can see that there's the structural element
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's likely some personality, some skills, some luck, and some structure that are all part of what makes friendships work and what makes a particular time important.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you'd brought up homophily before and researchers find the two main drivers of friendship are homophily and propinquity.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are those scientific terms for them so homophily is talking about similarity?
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: propinquity is talking about proximity and repeated contact.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's something that dorm floors get you're seeing the same people over and over again or you're seeing each other in a weekly club or a class that meets several times a week, even better if it meets.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you see the same people more than one semester in a row.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't just my research, but a lot of people's research have found, for example, that people are more likely to be friends with the person who has the apartment door across from them than they are someone down the hall or certainly than the floor below.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're more likely to be friends if they share a stairwell because you're having those repeated times when you're passing and maybe over time you're starting a conversation with people
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have a sticker for the same coffee shop that I like, or something like that.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Friendship takes persistence.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that the persistence is so true.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I like what you're talking about because it mixes the desire.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people have for things to just grow organically, which is wonderful.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that happens.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it proximity, I think, is a huge factor in that because you have the opportunity for things to grow organically.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But using the structure of the
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think what people are talking about when they say colleges and opportunity, there's so much structure in place that if those people that you would more organically see, if it's not clicking, there's not chemistry, then students I think should be leaning into the structure that exists.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It may feel contrived, but that is what will provide proximity.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like if you're a
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: a good connection.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then you got to join stuff so that you can force proximity with other people.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I found is that some students would come to college and cling onto the very first friends that they made because they felt like making friends was urgent and terrifying.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was one quote I had in my book that really stuck with me because it's both of those things.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It does feel urgent.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels terrifying.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It needs to happen.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's this perception that everyone else is doing it, social media plays a role in that too, not only everyone here on that campus, but they're on, but also their friends who are elsewhere are making it look like they have a lot of friends.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there can be this tendency to, as I said, stick with that first group.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: One trick to the friendship market is to keep your options open for a little bit.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meet people in other clubs and organizations, and it's not to,
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: He insincere about what your interests are, I always tell students, you know, think about the range of interests that you have, join a club or organization related to that even if it's just a little bit of an interest that you have, maybe it's a way that you can build both skills and something and build
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: friendships and relationships through something and those are skills they're going to need again anyway after college right when you move to wherever you're going even if you move after your home town maybe all the people that you were close with went somewhere else and you still need new friends or maybe you have grown beyond those people and you still need new friends like there isn't a time in life ever when you can never have the ability to connect with other people.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's a really important skill.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: For some people, college is the first-hand that skill is tested.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we sometimes think I made a friend like check that off, but instead friendship is a process.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's something that's never done.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've made a friend, then you need to work on keeping that relationship.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also really important to reflect on which friends are most meaningful to us.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Confuse what feels like an easy friend with being a good friend because again proximity plays a role So if someone lives on your floor Are you're in a same class together or you're in the same organization you've been extrapolating it outside of college You might think oh that relationship is really important or meaningful or supportive and then when that structure goes away When that proximity goes away it becomes a lot harder and you might realize oh this
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Friendship that I thought was something else was so good and useful, but it wasn't as deep as maybe I thought that's such a good point I think you make the point in the book about the difference between making friends and spending time with friends and that really is kind of what you're talking about Because you do have to start with the making friends, but yeah, but we actually had to keep seeing these people just being on the tech's group.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It isn't like check the box
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It might feel like that.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it must feel like that to young people.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, like, okay, I am in a text group.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you don't actually go to stuff with these people or spend time, it's just names on a screen.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in my book and in my broader work, I use network analysis also.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So part of what I look at is that there's not just individual like one-on-one friendships.
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: but instead people are embedded in a group.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But some people have one group of friends, which is the type of friendship that we tend to romanticize.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's what a lot of TV shows and movies show what I call tight knitters.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: They look like a ball of yarn, they're not work.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Compared to the other two types, I call compartmentalizers, which look like a bow tie.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: If people have two groups of friends, you can have three or four.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: but people know each other within the groups, but not across them.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for college students, sometimes they're friends from their dorm, friends from a class and friends from their sorority.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the third group are what I call samplers.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they have as many friends, but they're mostly one-on-one friends, so they're not work looks like a daisy.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I bring the set because if you have the same number of friends and you have one group for talking about social media, you can just send a message to the group and you've checked in with them.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if you have multiple groups, you need to spend time with all of them.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: or at least checking in with them in order to maintain those ties and if you have a sampler network, each of those are one-on-one friendships which again takes a lot more time especially to get the same level of depth.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So those different network types have different strengths and different challenges associated with them.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you have you found in your work that's certain personality types lean towards one of these three and can you say the three again the tight knitters compartmentalizers and the samplers I want to spend a little more time on it so the personality types that would lend itself towards each one I would love to hear more about that.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's something I wondered, I'm a social psychologist and a sociologist, so not a psychologist, but to the extent that I could tell it doesn't seem to be at least just personality type that factors in for example students who were more introverted.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: some of them were samplers, for example, you know, had a good number of friends, and I call them samplers because they meet one friend often in different places like one friend in class, one friend in a job, then some of the samplers, for example, are like social butterflies in terms of that same thing, and also with tight knitters too,
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: sometimes people end up in a tight-knit group because they're rather introverted and they're surrounding themselves by just this one group whereas other people have a lot of other friends.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are their closer friends.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have a lot of friends outside of that.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think about Gretchen Rubens work a little bit on personality types.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking about she has like the rebels because one type I could see someone who's more of a rebel or a question or not wanting to be in a tight knit group.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It could feel too suffocating or you know what what some people might covet and wish they had when they watched something like friends or
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: all the social media stuff that they think they want and everybody wants that.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some people would see that and just find it like, oh my gosh, maybe I want to go on spring break this year with not the same six people that I went with last year or that I'm expected to also live with next year.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could see how it could be suffocating to always be with the same people, but I could also see how a different person would find that extremely comforting.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's no right or wrong.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the greater point that I see is these are just different ways of managing a large institution.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you want it to be just one group and sometimes you want all different kinds of people in your life, but you're right.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The more people, I mean, it does take more effort to you can't just disappear on some people half the time.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I interviewed people over time also and what I was seeing is that some people kept the same network type over time and other people changed.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I interviewed them both during college and in the transition afterwards.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what I took from that is that I think some of their not-work type is personality, some of it is that experience that they had before, some students had a lot of practice making friends, going to a lot of different schools, a lot of different summer camps, and other people had gone to school with the same people since kindergarten.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have that practice making friends before college.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then another part of it was really the fit with the institution.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because one thing we haven't talked about yet is that I studied multiple institutions and found there were things that colleges did that made it easier harder for people to make friends.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Titanitors had an easier time at UNH at a large public institution, the University of New Hampshire, was one that I studied.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was harder in the fit was different, not worked types with different campuses.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I would like to hear more about the different things that the schools could do or have don't that you found in your research to help kids out because this actually would be helpful for current juniors in high school to think about before next year.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the three campuses that I studied in my book that just came out called making keeping and losing friends was Dartmouth College at University of New Hampshire and then
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is a two year non-residential, meaning it doesn't have dorms.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was curious to know what will dorms played, what will clubs and organizations played, and other reason I chose Manchester Community Colleges that they had a lot of clubs and organizations listed on their website, so I was really curious about that.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But some of the things that create a strong initial friendship market are
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: orientation programs.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dartmouth has a week long outdoor orientation program called Trips that over 90% of students participate in.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're these small groups that students call the other students that are part of it.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're trips to that are part of this group and they get to know each other quite well.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're living in dorms specifically for first year students, which is another place
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then there are a lot of clubs and organizations here of different types, some quite selective, some less.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So even more so, there are particular groups of students that have other targeted orientation programs, like one for first-gen low-income students that several weeks long, another for international students, all of these are different friendship markets that students are participating in versus UNH for example, have some optional
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: orientation programs like an outdoor one, but there's just a few days when students come to campus.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least at the time that I did my research that they were bonding with each other, and then they had the opportunity to live in dorms for first-year students or mixed-year dorms, which I first thought as did a lot of students.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, living in a mixed-year dorm could be really neat, because you could get to know older students, make friends across that difference.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: back to the friendship market idea that those non-first-year students already had their friendship set.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, I mean immediately when you said that, as like there's no way that worked.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what's sometimes it did is the few first-year students who lived in those dorms if they could find each other, then they were able to form bonds with each other, but they had a smaller number of people in the market.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking back to college and how the freshman dorm was a huge part of your identity with dorm you lived in, but not even just the building, the floor.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: First floor, that was part of who you were that became part of your identity quickly.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second you get there, even when you meet people, it was like, oh, where do you live?
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm on the third floor.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's a little bit of proximity, but it's still another floor.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then there was always that person who didn't quite click with their own floor in their own dorm.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: They would become a constant on your own floor.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is hard when you don't have that initial click, whether it's where you live or the stuff you join or the classes.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go really micro from a moment and talk about roommates.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know Dartmouth does it differently, right?
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty rare.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know how many schools are like that stuff?
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, but you're right, that it's a minority.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: The whole roommate thing.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just from a parent perspective now, it feels really bananas to me the way that there's this flurry of activity on social media mostly, having to figure out who your roommate's going to be.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it seems to you based entirely on homophole.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And kind of silly parts of homothely, not just maybe similar background, but similar clothing, similar style of videos on TikTok, like, oh, you stand in front of the mirror and dance in this particular way, I stand in front of the mirror and dance in this particular way, we're going to be wonderful roommates, it's like nobody seems to be talking about what time do you like to go to bed.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: generally are you staying up till three in the morning even studying with a light on like that could be a knowing I don't even mean parting and stuff just having the lights on cleanliness things that actually matter those are some of the things that the Dartmouth roommate matching takes into account so it's not completely random but students fill out a survey ahead of time that talks about
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: studying habits, sleeping habits, cleanliness, and matches people in that way.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And 100% don't work out, but a good number do research shows that they are more likely to be diverse roommate matches in that way, because as you mentioned, otherwise there seems to be a stigma of not finding a roommate.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: and so people are clinging on to something that makes them seem similar, but it doesn't mean that you're going to be compatible as a roommate.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is, I would say, like, a width of desperation that I feel among parents, honestly, because I'm not talking to other 18-year-old, usually I'm hearing about it from other parents, and yet there's worry that everybody's
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Matching up and some people don't even know where they're going to school yet either because they're on a waiting list or the school hasn't come out yet Maybe they're waiting to hear from a private school.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They may or may not go to that private school depending on the financial package.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They get yeah Because we also don't want to feel not chosen that feels bad.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's some of the issue that's going on here and with friendship more generally Lisa Wade talks about this in a book about hooking up
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: and while hooking up is a very different than friendship in a lot of ways, those processes of feeling, wanted feeling chosen, certainly apply.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Such a good point.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: As we wind down and we're thinking about these parents who are worried, I mean, my audience is really more the parents, such as as who are worried about their kids.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a kid who is on the way home and doesn't seem that happy.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: friendships change a lot.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're having a hard time, that doesn't always feel good, but I think it's important for us to keep in mind both as parents, I'm a parent as well, and for our students too, we're changing all the time, other people are changing, so even if we happen to find each other at a particular point,
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: things may change.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, there will be opportunities ahead of time.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think some really concrete things are not being in your phone all the time and paying attention to your surroundings.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I notice it at the cafe on campus.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's always a line.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also often looking at my phone trying to check emails in between.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: say hello, start up a conversation, if there's someone that you think is interesting, inviting them to whatever you do, to coffee, to grab a meal together.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's definitely something that happens a lot on college campuses for students that have a meal plan, making a plan to grab a meal after classes, pretty low stakes.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: To do that, you have to be willing to take a little bit of a risk too, because it's possible that someone will say no or give you an answer that you can really quite understand that isn't the excitement that you would hope for back to the friendship market idea is that maybe they're not in the market for friends.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think not taking it personally and being willing to put yourself out there again, where you might get that reward next time is really important in part of resilience.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right, and rejection is a part of life, because that's like we haven't used that word once this episode, but it is what we're talking about.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's these feelings of rejection that happen when you're not chosen.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're not chosen first or immediately, but like you said,
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Telling you everyone else has friends and then it's like how do we help these people find each other You don't necessarily answer that.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm always wondering that too I hear from so many adults who feel they don't have friends and I like wish I could help them match up They don't necessarily live in the same place.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not how it works.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there any last thoughts anything we didn't cover?
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, on that point, when I started writing this book or started doing the research, I was planning on talking about making and keeping friends, but I also have a chapter on losing friends, because that process of losing friends, whether your friendships are feeding away or breaking up is also a really natural and important part of life, even though it can feel really bad at times, even bad when you're the person who's doing that.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Breaking up with someone else because things had changed or because someone had let you down So, you know, coming back to that idea that friendship really is a process and it is work You know, it brings us a lot of joy It's a basic need that we have for connection, but there's also a lot of work involved in it
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you brought up something earlier too, I just find a reiterate that they do change.
• 31:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The people you met right away, and everyone else was looking at these people who clicked right away.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't always last, it oftentimes doesn't, and it changes, and you're a kid who might think, oh, everyone else has this group.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying that kid's wrong.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It may be that a lot of people have a group, but it doesn't mean that's the group that's going to.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Staying.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't even really talk about sororities and fraternities, but I think that almost goes without saying that that is another market that one could dip into or choose not to and I don't know percentage of each campus is Greek.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's different for every campus.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'd have to look that up, but it is a place you could try and it's a place that you could actively decide not to try and there'll be other people just like you who aren't interested.
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
• 31:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are times that a lot of people joined sororities of fraternities to make friends and sometimes that did happen and there were also a lot of hurt feelings that happened when one friend got in one house and another one didn't or
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: someone is spending time because just like friendships take time joining an organization that's quite intensive like that also takes time and so people are deciding where to spend their time in those instances.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Canada, thank you so much for coming and talking to me about this.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd recommend the book for people who love
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: the academic research side of friendship, and you have so many interesting examples in there, examples of students who try different ways to make friends, and especially if your kids struggling, it will give you hope as a parent that like, oh, okay, there's all these people out there who do it different ways, there isn't just one way to zero in on these different friendship markets, then make a work for you.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I end each chapter with takeaways for students, takeaways for parents, and takeaways for college, as a way to make it actionable for people.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's been wonderful talking with you.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, you guys, come back next week when our friendships are going well and college or otherwise we are generally happier all around and there's always hope for it to get better.