> Hanging out with a bunch of people who share similar interests with you for 3 - 4 yrs and living with them, fashions these strong bonds of friendship which are not made after this period.
You're speaking about a very particular set of colleges. A lot of the colleges people go to these days with 40,000+ students are not like this. You're one of potentially thousands of people in your given major. I've had many classes where I did not have a single overlap of students from previous coursework. It was very common for me to not see the same faces in my classes as I progressed. Yes, some series of classes I saw SOME of the same people but it was little overlap. Add in that my classes had zero social components, grading on a curve with insanely difficult coursework, and no incentive to ever help each other and you've got all the more reason to never get close to anyone.
A lot of students also don't live in dorms, live with other students, etc. I lived alone my entire college experience (6yrs). I have zero friends from college due to little class overlap, extremely competitive and cutthroat major, and very anti-social populous overall. Even the clubs were absolutely terrible. It was always a bunch of socially awkward nerd kids and I never found the clubs where cool kids were (guess they weren't in clubs!). It didn't help that the people who were most open were also people who had no intention of ever leaving the city that the college was in. I was in the mood to leave immediately. And I did and never went back since.
I did end up making lifelong friends outside of college though during those years - but that was because I was quite actively social outside of college too.
The great friends I made were not from my major but from the dorm I lived in for a couple of years. The people on my floor (approximately 60 men and women) socialized a lot. People would go to the dining hall in big groups, to the pub in big groups, watch TV and play games together, and would invite each other to social events at school clubs. If you wanted to order a pizza or go for a coffee, you just had to stop by the common room and could reliably find two or three people to join you. A few times each semester we held a party for the entire floor. Sometimes one floor in the building would invite another floor and a lot of friendships (and many romances) were formed.
In my third year I moved off campus and lived with people I met in the dorm. We were all in different programs.
Right. This lines up with people I know who did dorms. If you didn’t do dorms - you basically didn’t experience this part of college friendships and likely found them difficult to be formed.
Personally - I lived alone because I was too poor for the dorms. I got a good deal on an extremely small and niche studio apartment that was cheaper than the rooms in houses I was looking at. Naturally - I took it up because I was incredibly poor.
It’s always the Craigslist ads with no photos and maybe two sentences for a description that always end up being killer deals for the savvy hunter like myself.
You're speaking about a very particular set of colleges. A lot of the colleges people go to these days with 40,000+ students are not like this. You're one of potentially thousands of people in your given major. I've had many classes where I did not have a single overlap of students from previous coursework. It was very common for me to not see the same faces in my classes as I progressed. Yes, some series of classes I saw SOME of the same people but it was little overlap. Add in that my classes had zero social components, grading on a curve with insanely difficult coursework, and no incentive to ever help each other and you've got all the more reason to never get close to anyone.
A lot of students also don't live in dorms, live with other students, etc. I lived alone my entire college experience (6yrs). I have zero friends from college due to little class overlap, extremely competitive and cutthroat major, and very anti-social populous overall. Even the clubs were absolutely terrible. It was always a bunch of socially awkward nerd kids and I never found the clubs where cool kids were (guess they weren't in clubs!). It didn't help that the people who were most open were also people who had no intention of ever leaving the city that the college was in. I was in the mood to leave immediately. And I did and never went back since.
I did end up making lifelong friends outside of college though during those years - but that was because I was quite actively social outside of college too.