Imagine a kid, and imagine that they have been moving nearly every two years. Two years and then a reset. New classes and nobody that they know.

That was me.

Six elementary, three middle and one high school. Ten times that I had to make new friends.
Ten times I walked into a class on the first day, not knowing anyone there. I faced one of a student’s worst fears: not having friends in their classroom.

In this age of social media and mass media, everyone seems to know everything about the lives of everyone else.

But this was not the standard before.

Many have gone through this and know how bad it can be the first few months. Even if they haven’t moved, everyone was a freshman and had that one class where they did not know the people there.
If that taught me anything, it’s that knowing people is easy, but making them into friends is hard—that distinction is hard to make. I was fortunate enough to find people that I could call friends.
Many are fearing the changes that they have to make next year. We are less than halfway into the year, and students are already accustomed to their schedules and the people in their classes. Next year of high school will be different, and seniors are scared for college life as they send in applications.

But, it is not as bad as it looks. More often than not, everyone else is going to be fearing the same thing. Becoming a part of the solution ends this cycle. If you see that kid that is sitting alone, or not talking to people, give them a hand.

Some of the best people I know are these types of people: people that didn’t know who to talk to and needed someone to reach out to them. They opened up so fast and were amazing people. There was this girl in my Spanish class this year, and I also had her in another class last year. Always quiet, she was ignored. This year we ended up talking and we became very good friends in the span of a month.
Humans are social creatures. We as a species flourish with social interaction. It can take a long time to make real friends, but finding them is a part of life.

Everyone has been a freshman, and everyone knows the feeling of not knowing anyone. I personally feel this every new year. The best we can do is to help others out.

Find that kid that sits alone. Find the students that don’t end up talking to anyone.
Then maybe we won’t be freshmen ever again.