The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 — 16 

On making 
friends during a 
pandemic

BY LEAH LESZCZYNSKI, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

E

ver since I arrived on campus last year, vetting 

classmates in discussions, student organization 

meetings and informal gatherings, in hopes of 

creating more fulfilling human connections has become 
second nature to me.

Prior to the new world created by the COVID-19 pan-

demic, typical student life provided numerous opportu-

nities to spark relationships with those around us. This 

semester, 78% of undergraduate credits and many student 

organizations are taking place entirely online — the vir-

tual format undoubtedly proposes a unique, less desirable 

situation for learning and student interaction than “nor-

mal” circumstances. Further, the benefits of the limited 

number of in-person classes, events and serendipitous 

moments are thwarted by differing levels of fear of a high-

ly contagious virus, the spread of which is highly related 

to human proximity. Today, fewer 

conversations between classmates 

follow them out the door of their 

discussion room, no packed dining 

halls encourage interaction among 

students sharing a table and no fans 

in the Big House means no student 

season ticket holders will harmonize 

over a chorus of “Mr. Brightside” 

during the 2020 football season. 

LSA sophomore Samuel Levy told 

me about his entirely remote class 

schedule over email.

“I’d say the obstacles I’ve faced 

are due to the very procedural and 

formal aspect of Zoom,” Levy said. 

“It just feels way too formal and ev-

eryone focuses on the work. Obvi-

ously, this is probably the best-case 

scenario in terms of class, but for 

making friends, it’s not.”

Regardless of whether a student 

is a seasoned senior or clueless 

freshman, on or off campus, follow-

ing or ignoring public health guide-

lines, outgoing or introverted, the 

ability to maintain and make new 

friends seems to be another aspect 

of student life that has been radically 
transformed by this virus. 

LSA freshman Makayla Beardsley 

shared her struggle to make friends 

after arriving on a campus unrecog-

nizable to the traditional expecta-

tions of what college life looks like.

“There was a long period of time 

when I first got here that I didn’t re-

ally try to meet any friends,” Beard-

sley said. “I (could not) really go to 

anyone’s dorm room and (could not) 

even see anyone’s faces unless we 

were eating due to masks, so I got 

stuck asking ‘What’s the point?’”

This perspective is understand-

able, and I cannot imagine how difficult it is for incom-

ing students to be starting their lives at the University of 

Michigan amid this pandemic. Even in normal times, it is 

hard enough to adjust to the college experience and make 

meaningful connections in a new place, but trying to be-

come part of the University’s community virtually is not a 

challenge most incoming students anticipated or prepared 

for when picturing and planning their college years. 

Asked about the new aspects of life taking place vir-

tually, Levy wrote, “A lot of people believe that making 

friends, or even dating, online is the last resort. Although I 

don’t necessarily agree with this, I think that the reason it 

is perpetuated so often is because there is a lack of ‘seren-

dipitous moments’ when meeting anyone online.”

There is something to be said about the compara-

tive value of in-person connections. Looking back on my 

freshman year, the night I shared a twin XL bed with three 

friends in Markley for a “Riverdale” marathon and then 

sang Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” to the 2 a.m. audi-

ence in the communal bathroom is among my most trea-

sured serendipitous moments of college. None of my fond-

est memories from my first seven months of college were 

made with Zoom, FaceTime or Snapchat. 

Today, these types of moments, marked by gut-wrench-

ing laughter and togetherness, are more difficult to have. 

The opportunities to even make friends to share these ex-

periences — whether virtually, or with masks — are few 

and far between. Levy himself has felt this.

“After class is over, everyone just leaves Zoom and goes 

on with their lives,” he said. “If we were in person, just the 

physical act of being together when class ends and col-

lectively walking out of class definitely makes it easier to 

strike up conversations with anybody outside of class.”

LSA freshman Caitlyn Bloomburg told me about mak-

ing friends in the dorms during the pandemic. 

“There are some people who will stop to have a con-

versation with you in the hallway, but there are also the 

people who will just look down and walk by, and try to 

keep their distance.”

On top of the virus severely reducing the number of op-

portunities to make friends, some students are finding it 

harder to maintain relationships cemented by in-person 

interactions from six months ago before the full force of 

the pandemic hit. 

“Most of the friends I have made aren’t on campus this 

semester, so the only contact that I do have with them is 

online,” Levy said. “As for the friends I have on campus, I 

can’t meet up with them because of COVID. I have been 

interacting with all of them through texting and some-

times FaceTiming, but other than that, nothing else.”

Beardsley experienced a similar struggle.

“Some of the friendships I’ve had have definitely got-

ten tested due to COVID social distancing guidelines,” she 

said. “Because my current friends back home are all at dif-

ferent colleges, we only interact through social media and 

phone calls, but we’ve tried our best to make it work while 

still trying to keep everyone safe.”

Simply put, friends are important, to our social and aca-

demic well-being, our health and thus our quality of life. 

Friends provide support in all aspects of life, and in col-

lege, when family is often hundreds of miles away, friend-

ships are often looked upon to share struggles and provide 

reassurance and comfort.

Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy investigated 

the importance of human connection in his book “Togeth-

er” by exploring loneliness as an epidemic itself, as well 

as its role in numerous national epidemics — thereby pro-

posing the question of how the loneliness epidemic may 

be exacerbated by the current pandemic. Even before CO-

VID-19 turned many of our lives upside down, the men-

tal health of college students was 

particularly concerning to public 

health experts, with increasing rates 

of anxiety and depression among our 

demographic in recent years. Now, 

during a time of increased isolation 

and stress about the state and future 

of our world (and even the continu-

ance of our democracy) brought on 

by the pandemic, the increased dif-

ficulty of making and maintaining 

friendships makes this time period 

a great test of our mental resilience. 

Notwithstanding the tribulations 

of life in a pandemic, students have 

pursued and created new opportuni-

ties to make friends and meaningful 

connections. 

Bloomburg told me about her ef-

forts to make friends this semester. 

“I joined the Class of 2024 Facebook 

page, and people were posting bios 

about themselves … so if I had stuff 

in common with people I would add 

them on Snapchat or Instagram.” 

She also shared that her resident ad-

viser has a “speed friending” Zoom 

call in the works to facilitate connec-

tions in her dorm hall.

Needless to say, the role of social 

media is becoming more integral to 

the student experience with each 

passing week that this pandemic 

keeps study spaces socially dis-

tanced and a large number of stu-

dents off campus altogether. Reach-

ing out to find students with similar 

interests seems to have become com-

monplace on Facebook, and Reddit 

is no stranger to posts plainly asking 

for new friends. 

Regardless of how we manage to 

find friends and maintain friend-

ships we are particularly grateful to 

have made before this pandemic, it is hard to find the same 

joy and make the same connections on FaceTime calls 

and through Zoom breakout rooms. It is hard to navigate 

the complex matters of making and maintaining friend-

ships even without a pandemic forcing time spent with 

our friends and peers into one-dimensional squares on a 

screen. The most practical and, indeed, the only answer is 

to make the best of it. 

Throughout my interviews for this article, I found reas-

surance in knowing that I am not the only one struggling 

to find new friends and maintain my current friendships 

right now. Over the past month, I have found comfort in 

being met with unanimous enthusiasm after asking class-

mates to join a group chat for our shared class. Aside 

from the placement of French pronouns and the themes 

of Thomas Paine’s “Agrarian Justice,” the most valuable 

thing I have learned so far this semester is that people des-

perately want to connect — it is just a matter of someone 

making the first attempt.

ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY

