Ok so I’m a freshman at UC Berkeley, coming all the way from Toledo, Ohio. I’ll be honest I have been getting extremely homesick and feel so uprooted from everything I’ve known. It’s just so different here and so many Chinese people lol! But yeah I’ve met people but I guess I’m struggling to really immerse myself and form true friendships. Anyways, enough of that. So I was stalking a friends acquaintance on social media and saw that one of her friends also goes to Berkeley. This person is from Toledo as well (obviously) and is a sophomore here. I know that they have no idea who I am but I was wondering if it would be weird to reach out to them via Facebook messenger or something and ask to meet up so we can, idk, talk about home or just idk. We don’t have any “mutual friends” btw. Or is being from the same city not a legit enough excuse to contact a random person? I don’t know haha.
Yeah…I wouldn’t contact them. That seems kind of creepy and if I got a friend request from someone I didn’t know I wouldn’t accept it. I think you will be able to make plenty of friends on your own instead of stalking people on Facebook. I know it must seem good to know someone from home, but trust me you will find other friends too and it will all work out. Good luck!
I don’t see it as being a problem. It would be fine to share with someone else from back home, but I wouldn’t specifically mention “homesickness” as that might be more concerning…
I would not message that person… it’s more likely they’ll ignore the friend request if you don’t even have mutual friends. I mean, I know I would personally be creeped out if a random person from my city contacted me, so it might not be the best way to make friends.
I would stick to the people in your dorms, classes, clubs/ECs, etc., things will start falling in place soon.
Idk how y’all do it in Ohio, but that’s not a normal thing to do at a school like Berkeley
I think it might be a little weird just because you don’t really have anyone in common. It would be different if this was a friend of a friend or something, and you could have your friend connect the two of you. But it sounds like it’s a friend of an acquaintance of a friend, and that’s maybe a degree to far of separation. You can always try because it’s not like you have anything to lose, but I wouldn’t be overly surprised if it doesn’t have the outcome you want.
Something you could try is to see if your school or a club/organization at your school has a mentorship program. At my college, there were a couple of different groups that had peer mentor programs, where upperclassmen were paired with lowerclassmen to just help them out, answer questions, hang out, etc. You might be able to request an out-of-state student, and while you might not get a student from your hometown, you can still solve the problem of wanting to chat with someone who’s in a similar situation to you (being far from home).
Another thing you could try is if you had friends who went far away to school, you could also chat with them over facebook/Skype about your different experiences with moving far away to school. That’s another way you can find a way to just talk to people who are in similar situations.
But other than that, try typical ways of getting out and meeting knew people. Join clubs, get a job, play a sport (intramural sports are great ways to meet people), participate in an activity, take a rec class, form a study group, hang out in the common room, etc. One of the best cures for homesickness is to keep busy. One of the things I’ve noticed about a lot of people who move to new areas is that they spend a lot of time comparing the new place to their hometown and lamenting about all of the things that are different or worse or missing. Try to focus on all of the great things about the area you are in and all of the things that make it cool and interesting. Schedule fun things so that you have something to look forward to, and make plans to talk with your family and old friends so that you can keep in touch. And get off of facebook! Go do something fun instead.