Many students are horrified by room full of people they don’t know for a large variety of reasons. Class often becomes a chore when you cannot socialize and becomes stressful when no one you know wants to be your partner for a project. Those exposed to these types of scenarios do not look forward to this friendless class and therefore are put under social pressure in order to make friends. Now, imagine if every single class was this way and everyone in the school is a complete stranger to you. This is what transfer students go through when transitioning to a brand new school.

This is applicable to many students per year as they can normally be identified as outcasts or “the person with no friends” as in my case during the first day of school. Orientation is meant to connect students this way and while many extremely extroverted students are able to make some connections to other students this normally isn’t the case. I walked into Metea for the first time during orientation and they gave a very abnormal aura. There was a clear feeling that everyone wanted to form connections, but since all of them would have to be from scratch they really didn’t bother.  Everyone there would fall into different cliques and social statuses so a connection for a day wouldn’t be vital. Orientation is meant to receive a sense of familiarity to the building, not to make friends.

Then there was the first day, the day  I believed would be my downfall. It’s sole purpose was to introduce students to the class and do some icebreakers. Icebreakers are good for allowing everyone to vaguely know each other but they’re not deep enough to spark up some connections.

Lunch, of course, was the worst part. We all know that feeling of sitting alone at lunch with no one to talk to. I thankfully didn’t experience that for long as some freshman guy came up to me and introduced himself. These types of people are known as “weird” but for transfer students it is actually a very helpful introduction to the school. Here is where my story branches off on a more positive note.

On the subsequent day I met Danny Carrillo in my PE period. He seemed relatively nice and had the same lunch period as me. We shared something that brought us together in a group of thousands of students. From that point on he introduced me to a large group of people each day that grew the amount of connections I had. I was accepted.

My story happened much faster than most transfer students, and the sole reason was that someone took the time to introduce themselves to me. It may seem scary to talk to someone but you never know what you could accomplish by simply taking a risk. Meteahas a plethora of transfer students this year as always and here we need to make sure they feel accepted. Taking the time to talk to someone new doesn’t just help that person feel included. It also provides you with opportunity to gain connections and meet new people, many of which will eventually become your friends.