Making friends in college can be really difficult. But this certified socialite and BrainGain staff writer has the perfect eight suggestions to help grow your social circle in the next three or four years. I can personally guarantee, none of these will fail you. Ask the fifty friends standing next to me. What do you mean you can’t see them? 
 

1. Channel your inner chameleon: change yourself to fit the vibe of the social situation. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. Whether its a group of intense sport lovers, rap battle pros, or Chinese tea connoisseurs, you should butt right into every conversation and pretend you’re not the odd one out. The identity crisis is worth it if you end up with a hoard of friends. Again, they’re right here.
   
    
2. Manspread in your dorm: hang your laundry from the lounge windows, make ramen in the laundry room, host book clubs in the dorm hallway. The more space you take, the more people will notice you, and admire your utter disregard for community and common spaces. If it has worked for straight white men for centuries, it will probably work for you too.
   
    
3. Be interesting: have a quirk that helps you stick out in a crowd, but in a cool, anti-establishment way. Get a tattoo of your favourite politician on your bicep (a nice Putin portrait, perhaps?). Or carry around multiple test tubes with a mixture of grenadine, green tea and coke that’s lost its fizz. Call it your special drink, and insist that others drink it, because people love free stuff, and science.
   
    
4. Be a trailblazer when it comes to extracurriculars: for a person as quirky as you, most extracurricular options in college will probably not cut it. Be your own Gandhi and become the change you want to see in the world. Start extracurricular clubs for your niche interests, even if the establishment calls them ‘weird’ or a ‘waste of time’. Only you can dictate the value of tide pod bracelet making. Even if nobody shows up to the first few meetings, you can stock up on bracelets to give to your future friends.
   
    
5. Ask the usual questions, often: As soon as you meet someone new, pop a question that is sure to start a conversation. Like:what makes you cry, can you check this mole on my butt and do you think Timon and Pumba are more than ‘just friends’? People crave intimacy, but they don’t always realise it. So keep asking personal and direct questions. Who doesn’t love those, right?
   
    
6. Feed people food that will cure them of their allergy conspiracy: Nobody can resist a good guacamole, and there’s no way people won’t speak to you and fall in deep friendship with your dazzling personality and your mountain of extra garlicky guac. Sneak in a little tomato or peanut butter for those who believe in the pseudoscience of ‘allergies’. You and your fifty besties can laugh away the debt-incurring grocery bills later.
   
    
7. Don’t leave your brand-new friends alone: Cry together, do laundry together, eat together. Because, as Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ husband says: “space is just a word made up by someone who’s afraid to get too close.” So, you can brighten your crying sessions by inviting a few people to join you. Intimacy needs to really be nurtured in the early phases of a new friendship.
   
    
8. Be persistently nice: No matter how many times you get rebuffed. Or how many people look at you like you’re the strand of hair they found in their soup. Be nice, because, at the very least, you can kill them with kindness, and then they won’t be able to be anyone’s friend.
    

 Happy April Fool's Day!

If you liked this article, but are wondering how to actually manage and foster your personal life in college, check out:
Tips to make the most out of relationships, studies and finances at university
Friends are the best anti-depressants: study by University of Warwick
How to survive college with your sanity intact