New Faces, New Places

"When you spend all day every day with the same core group of people, they become your primary outlets to talk with and listen to no matter the subject."

By Alex Espinoza

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Every year, hundreds of thousands of kids leave their hometowns to start their new lives as college freshmen. While freshman year is definitely a time for personal growth, a student’s social life must adapt to the new environment as well. Youth Radio’s Alex Espinoza tells us how he became close friends with people he met during his freshman year of college.

For the first 18 years and 4 months of my life, the Bay Area was the only home I knew. That all changed last August when I stepped aboard a plane for Phoenix to start my new life as a college student at Arizona State University.

Looking back, I now know that moving from a quiet house of five people to a crazy dorm filled with 900 freshmen was quite a transition. But that’s what freshman year is all about – moving into a new environment and developing relationships with new people.

By the second semester, I noticed that my relationships with my close friends started growing in ways that I had never experienced before. Sure, you can still call and get in contact with your family and friends from back home, but it’s not the same as the face-to-face interaction you have with your friends at school.

My college friends and I started having deeper and deeper conversations about our personal lives and life in general. We discussed what we want to achieve in life and what our purpose is on Earth. I noticed through these conversations that I personally opened up to my new friends more than I ever had to my friends and family back home.

One conversation that really stands out in my mind, happened one night when we were talking about life and death. The conversation began when one of my friends asked, ‘What do you think happens to us when we die?’ Some of us suggested that we reincarnate; others said they believed in heaven; while some people in our group believed that once we die, it’s over.

It was very cool to have such an educated conversation about people’s personal philosophies with an open-minded and receptive group. This talk really illustrated how we grew from the first getting-to-know-you conversations that we had, that focused on simple questions like ‘where are you from?' and 'what’s your major?’

As we were talking about our personal philosophies on death, many of us started sharing our own stories of people we knew who had passed away. Without hesitation, I brought up how my Aunt and my Grandpa died within 24 hours of each other during my senior year of high school. This was the first time in my life that I could seriously feel comfortable sharing this story with anyone outside my family.

I can’t really explain why I felt able to talk about this hard time in my life with people I’d only known for a few months...there was just a new element of comfort which allowed me to feel open. Maybe it was because we lived together in close proximity and had no one else to talk to. But when you spend all day every day with the same core group of people, they become your primary outlets to talk with and listen to, no matter the subject.

Now that I’m back home for the summer, it’s crazy to look back and think that these complete strangers became the people I could share my life so quickly. While it’s not the same talking to my friends over instant messenger, I know when we get back to Arizona, we’ll be having good times right away. But until school starts in August, I’ll just have to be content with Facebook and MySpace.