In my first weeks at UF, I've noticed an overwhelming sentiment among freshmen: people you don't know suddenly feel much more approachable. In some ways, I've felt this myself. I have almost surely spoken to more people in the last week than all of my years of high school combined.
Most of the people I talk to seem to feel that the students here at UF are nicer and more approachable. Although I would love for UF to be unique in that way, I would challenge that the university is an outlier. I argue that the people here aren’t necessarily more likely to say “hi” or strike up a conversation than anywhere else. Consider the opposite: this would mean that UF somehow admits only the most friendly and outgoing students — a quality I don't think is measured on the Common App.
But this sentiment is clearly real, so if the people aren’t different, what is?
Moving away to college is a significant shift for most people. Being away from home for the first time, starting with few or no friends and facing a vast ocean of new experiences can be overwhelming. What do people do when they don’t have friends? They seek new ones. For some, this means reaching out to new people, and for others, it means being open to those who reach out to them.
The incentives have changed, but the people behind them haven't. To me, most people are equally willing to form new connections, whether they're in the first week of college or back home. The only obstacle is people have built up a wall in their head that once the cliques settle, that's final. Only an environment change as extreme as moving to college can change their friend group.
This phenomenon reminds me of the “fleas in a jar” experiment, in which a temporary change causes a permanent effect. In this experiment, fleas are placed in a jar. The fleas, who are capable of jumping past the rim of the jar, do so regularly. Next, a lid is placed on the jar and the fleas are left for three days. When the lid is removed, the fleas will never again jump past the height of the lid for the rest of their lives.
When you go home for the holidays, start your new internship or just walk around a public park, I challenge you to treat meeting new people with the same fervor that college freshmen have during their first week. I think you'll be surprised how many people reciprocate. Will everyone? Obviously not, but you weren't going to talk to them anyway before, so you haven’t lost anything.
You've been placed in a new jar, and it feels great to jump high again. But as time passes, friend groups settle and you grow up, remember — the lid is only in your head.
Ethan Niser is a UF computer science freshman.
