How to make friends (and how not to make friends)

Play your cards right and you’ll have a great group of friends.

How to make friends:

• Borrow notes from someone in your class to get the conversation started.
• Strike up a conversation with your residence neighbour— you have some common ground, literally.
• Join an intramural sports team or a club (or write for the *Gazette*!) It’s a great way to find people with similar hobbies and interests.
• Go to a bar. Let’s be honest, liquid courage helps.
• Ask someone at a party about an item of clothing they’re wearing. We all love to be complimented.
• Network! Meet friends through friends, especially in the first few weeks of school. People aren’t busy with classes yet, so there will be lots going on.
• Don’t turn down invites. For anything. Ever.

How NOT to make friends:

• Watch television/play distracting games/creep every person you’ve ever known on Facebook/etc., in class. If you’re not there to learn, stay home. You’re not learning, and you’re hindering everyone else.
• Play bad music loudly at all hours of the night. We all have our guilty pleasures but I really don’t need to hear you and your friends drunkenly singing along to Enrique Iglesias at 3 a.m.
• Stay home and watch every single episode of Mad Men ever created. Don Draper may be hotter than any guy on campus, but he cannot be your friend.
• Any library faux-pas. Don’t take phone calls, talk on quiet floors or take up prime real estate at the Killam with anything other than schoolwork during midterms and finals.