Classmates are a resource

This may seem silly and super obvious, but it is important to make friends in your classes. Now hold on! Don’t stop reading this, hear me out. Yes, I know it might seem silly to have to talk about this.

I am currently taking Structural Steel Design, historically a class third year Civil Engineering students take. I, being in the Co-op Program, am taking it in my fourth year. I keep marveling at how the majority of the class is third years and us 4/5 and 5/5 students feel so outnumbered. Yet today I found out that most of them think the class is filled with seniors.

This blew my mind. This year’s Civil Engineering graduating class is about 50 people, which isn’t that much. I am currently in a Civil Engineering GroupMe containing 63 students. I know most of the Civil Engineering majors in my year by face or name. So the fact that this class of Civil Engineers couldn’t even recognize each other was shocking.

One of the things that I value the most about my Stevens experience is the camaraderie and people working to help each other in classes. I understand that sometimes your best friends are in different majors, but that shouldn’t matter. When you start taking major-specific classes, you will be taking classes with the same people. Chances are you will be taking multiple classes with the same people from now until you graduate. So it would probably pay off to turn to the person on your right, or your left, and ask them their name.

If you make friends with even one person it will go a long way. That one person might know two people, those two people might know another two, and so on. Then, before you know it, you will be in a GroupMe with your whole class. This can be used whether you are confused in class or about homework, or if you just need to complain about how long the homework is. Make a platform to help each other (just follow the Honor Code), even if it’s as simple as verifying when the homework is due.

So don’t worry about being shy or the other person using you, use the resources available to you and your classmates. At the very least, classes will become a little bit more bearable.