Friends — how many of us have them?





Being a teacher has, believe it or not, shown me several things to love about kids. I admire, for example, their hopefulness and their willingness to show emotion. The thing I love most about kids, though, is how easily they make friends. 


Making friends as a working adult is tough, something you just don’t think about when you’re counting down the days to college graduation. I remember at my old job there was a woman I wanted to become friends with because we seemed to have much in common and I learned she thought the same thing of me. But we went months without saying more than hello to each other. It was pretty ridiculous. You would have thought we wanted to ask each other to prom. We finally broke the ice in the ladies room, of all places, and made a brunch date. We’ve been best buds since.


I recently joined a new church and I’ve found myself faced with this challenge of making new friends once again, a challenge that’s made even more daunting by the fact that the church has more than 10,000 members. 


Today Jezebel.com features a post titled “How to Make Friends in the Post-Collegiate World.” Two tips offered — be a joiner and reconnect with people from your past — have certainly been helpful for me as of late. I joined a small group at my church and one of the other young women from the group and I had lunch last week to get to know each other better. Since I live in my hometown again, I’m also making an effort to spend time with pals from high school who have also returned to Birmingham. Nothing beats a girls night out with ladies who knew you when you had acne and perpetual bad hair days and somehow made you feel beautiful anyway. 


How do you make friends as a young professional?

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6 Comments

  1. I haven’t lived in my hometown in about 10 years and I’ve picked up and started over in far-flung states twice already. So I know all about making new friends.

    I’ve been lucky in that when I start a new job I always find at least one or two people to whom I latch on to immediately. And back in Ky I made lots of lasting friendships at church and working in church-sponsored programs. Hopefully that will happen soon here in Birmingham.

    The best advice I can give is to not be secluded and dismissive and just be yourself. I don’t mean run around like a maniac, of course, but I firmly believe that if you show others how cool you are, they’ll wanna hang out with you.

  2. Just be more popular, that’s what I’d do!

  3. Just be more popular, that’s what I’d do!

  4. church has been the most popular way for me. lucky i attend a fairly young church.

  5. It’s even harder for me now, being a mom working from home… I don’t even have co-workers to latch on to. 🙂

    I’ve had to get over my shyness, and drop myself into random situations, even though it makes me totally uncomfortable. In the past 7 months, I have met several people with whom I had nothing in common (other than we had recently given birth), and two that I totally click with.

    I’m now challenging myself to strike up random conversations with people every once in a while, and hoping they don’t think I’m a weirdo. I’ll let you know how that turns out…

  6. As an adult I have been the type to make friends fairly easily. After leaving my home state to go to college I was thrust into having to start at square one with finding new friends. One of my closest work friends I just struck up a conversation with while she waited for her ride to pick her up. A few years ago I saw a group of people at church that were around my age and literally walked up to one of them and said I wanted to be their friend. That group has become an important part of my life.

    Fortunately, most people are equally interested in making new friends but don’t know how to go about it out of fear of rejection. I don’t mind being the one to make the first move, so to speak.

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