Hannah

Hi, my name is Hannah. I'm in my fourth year of university and my hometown is Toronto, Ontario. I came into university in my first year. I walked into the residence and I came in with huge expectations, so huge that they weren't realistic. And I kind of just expected that, you know, I'd walk in and then all of a sudden I'd have like all these friends coming over to me, and I found that I didn't really click with my tower right away because I felt that at the end of orientation week I didn't have a solid group of friends that I'd missed the boat and that that was it and I was just not going to have any friends during university. I would just go to sleep, wake up, do work the whole day, go to class, and I would just stay in my room. And I didn't really make an effort to go out and talk to other people. I really just expected them to come to me. And when I went home during the winter break and I got to see all of my friends from home, it made me realize that I'm not a shy person. It's not something that's necessarily wrong with me, but I need to take an active role and I can't just expect people to come to me. Life isn't like that, you have to go out and get the things that you want, so when I got back to school then I started to reach out to people in my classes and started to form study groups with people and through those study groups, I formed friendships. You have to take an active role. You can't just expect that the things you want are just going to come to you with little to no effort. Life's not like a movie. You're not going to walk out of a coffee shop and someone spills their coffee on you, like that's not how it works. You have to actively go out and seek those things. So, for instance, I would always have my door open just expecting, oh well my door's open so someone should come in and say hi. But other people's doors were open and I never went over to them, so I think for me, the big takeaway and the takeaway I hope to give to future students is that yeah, you have to take an active role. You have to go out and get what you want.