My Advice to Freshmen: Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

Hey everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well. I had the most fun weekend! One of my best friends from high school, Jenna, came to visit me at USC! This was her first time visiting me here and we had a blast.

While she was here, we went out downtown to celebrate my roommate’s birthday, we visited Santa Monica and Venice Beach, and I showed her around USC. It was awesome to see her and really fun showing off my life here in LA.

Anyways, the blog theme for this week is “my advice to freshmen.” Jenna’s visit to LA really got me thinking about friendship, and friendships in college. There’s a classic old poem by Joseph Parry that goes as follows:

In my experience so far, this poem is so accurate. In college you have so many opportunities to meet amazing new people. It’s a wonderful chance to meet lots of new friends: people who are different from you, different from anyone you ever met in high school. People at USC come from all over the world and represent all kinds of passions and interests. It’s really an unparalleled opportunity to expand your network of friends.

That said, while it’s great to make lots of new friends in college, I think it’s important to maintain high school friendships too. I love staying in touch with Jenna and my other high school friends. It’s even more fun when they get to come visit me at USC. And, of course, it’s also a ton of fun when my college friends come visit me back home in Portland.

Anyways, after spending three fantastic days showing Jenna around LA, she left to head back to Portland. After she left, I headed off to Springfest, USC’s spring music festival, with some of my amazing college friends.

This year, the line-up included WALLA, Holychild, Audio Push, Isiah Rashad, Borns, Portugal. The Man, GTA, and 2 Chainz. I love Portugal. The Man, so I was psyched to see them perform! A couple of fun facts: Portugal. The Man is actually based in Portland, Oregon, my hometown! Plus, one of their songs was actually on my featured Spotify playlist long before I ever found out they were coming to USC. See my Spotify playlist on my page here or get my playlist through this link. Here is a picture of the Springfest headliner, 2 Chainz, performing in McCarthy Quad.

So Springfest took up most of Saturday. On Sunday, for Easter, my college friend’s mom came to visit and a bunch of my other friends and I went out to brunch with her in Santa Monica. Here are some photos of us at Easter brunch and hanging out at the beach after. It was a really fun time.

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Well that’s all for this week! This Thursday I’ll be heading to Atlanta, Georgia for a scholarship convention. More about that next week!

Juliana

 

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