‘Acting completely nonchalant will not make you friends’: Psychologist, author gives advice on making connections on campus

Making friends on a college campus can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Marisa Franco, a professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the New York Times bestselling book “Platonic,” gave a crowd of roughly 200 Lafayette College students advice for making friends on Tuesday. “Students struggle because they have a lot of misconceptions when it comes to connection,” Franco said. “They are waiting for someone to choose them rather than knowing that they can choose.” Hosted inside the “Bicentennial Village” and organized by the Lafayette Activities Forum, the Office of Student Involvement and Dean of Students Walter Snipes, Franco’s talk covered numerous strategies from her book to help build relationships. Such strategies included showing up to and engaging with people in social spaces, being vulnerable, initiating social events, being intentional about making friends and making people feel like they matter.

This excerpt comes from the named source. Read the original for the full reporting.