I am really struggling with the transition from community college to private university in regards to building relationships. In community college – and generally throughout grade school – it was easy for me to find and make friendships, but since starting at my four-year institution, I’ve found it really difficult to make connections. I was lucky enough to get undergraduate housing and in my apartment, I’ve established pseudo-friendships with my suite-mates. My roommate spends a lot of her time out with her boyfriend and the two other girls in my apartment are not generally the type of person I get along with and they are too self-involved to actually make a genuine friendship with.
I am very sarcastic with a dry or witty sense of humor, which usually makes fast-friends, but the people my suite-mates hang out with – and my suite-mates – don’t understand my humor and it takes them too long to catch on to what I’m saying, which makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I have spent most of my life avoiding “Valley Girl” types, but now I am sort of surrounded by them and am sadly trying to make an effort to be better friends with them. I feel very out of place in this genre of people because it feels as though nothing they do or say is genuine and I have a hard time understanding the dynamic.
I obviously have tried reaching out to those people in my classes, but that effort has only gotten me stuck in the opposite direction in the genre of people who aren’t very responsive in conversation – ie. they understand my humor, but don’t care to acknowledge anything I say to them. I want to find people who are more level-ground in their demeanor, if that makes any sense. I just feel like the people around me are either way too pumped up about nothing and the others are just way to unenthused. I don’t think there is a “Down-to-Earth” or a “Dry-Humor” club.
I probably went into more detail than necessary in the description of my type of loneliness, but I am grasping at the fact that I am struggling to find my place even though there are people around me. Is there anyone that is experiencing the same feeling?