Comment by PKop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PKop | Hacker News Reader

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True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up.

It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart before the horse. First you must work hard together.

I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things together outside of the classes.

Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the "shared struggle" category.

For my sake, I picked up martial arts in college and would say that ~75% of my life long friends come from there. I have work-related friends, but there's a very clear difference between them and the people I've punched for years :D

I definitely agree with the shared struggle aspect and add the activity should also have "moments of down time" where you're still "doing" the activity, but you're sort of at a point of waiting. These are the moments where you get to find out someone's life, like if they've got a kid that plays a musical instrument or new policies at their own jobs.

One simple thing we did early on was simply ask some of the other people "what are you doing tonight?" after the class. At least at the college age, there's always a chance a handful of people will be down for going to a bar or pool hall afterwards.

I would second this. Martial Arts is a great place to get know to people and overcome social aniaxy.

>simply ask some of the other people "what are you doing tonight?" after the class

Yes, and 1) in this context the stakes are lower, it's not some big planned event or party. And 2) You're not trying to meet people or start from 0 at a party amongst strangers; these are people you already know you're just out having a good time.

I want to echo this because I strongly believe this to be true. Sharing a challenging experience together is one of the strongest factors in setting up friendships. I've made friends with a 70-year old because we were standing in line in the cold and wanted to complain about the urgent care we were trying to visit.

Many of my closer work relationships have come from venting about aspects of the company we didn't like. And, echoing the other responders, many of my closest friends from college were those that I psetted with at 4am.

Advice to the OP: get involved with a club or activity that has challenging aspects (e.g. a service club or a sports club) rather than a shared interests club. Don't worry too much about not being too interested in "traditional CS" things - just be open to sharing and learning about your non overlapping interests.

A lot of fraternities/clubs buy into this through hazing, but this is getting chomped down upon by many universities.

> True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up.

Have two "forever" friendships over 20 years, where we talk almost every day & have been around for good & bad in each other's lives, even though on different continents for past 12 years.

You have to believe me when I profess that such friendships are 'forged over blood, sweat, rum and tears'.

Some of my best friends have been made doing theatre. I have zero interest in acting, but doing all the other things involved in staging a performance is a load of fun, and the intensity of the collaboration can make for really strong and long lasting friendships based on common experience. A good theatre company needs people of different types to work, you can probably find a space that suits you talents and temprement.

i want to second studying together. i had the same experience when i went to university. the only friends i made from one university were those who formed a study group in the second year that kept together for the while duration of the class.

later i joined a volunteer group that helped students get summer jobs.

all my friends came from groups like these...

Yes, suffer with someone. Build an app together or study together or take on really difficult projects.

I was going to suggest joining a fraternity for the same reasons.

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