How Not To Make Friends At SCAD

Written by Rachelle Hernandez. Graphics by Aria Eyde.

I haven’t made a single friend in a class at SCAD. Not a single one.

I have tried, technically. I’ve smiled at people, waved, laughed, read their stories and poems, looked at their drawings, and learned tiny pieces of their lives without ever really becoming part of them. There are people I haven’t seen in months whose writing I still remember. There are people whose names I still recognize on class lists and think, Oh, thank God, you’re here.

I just haven’t made a single friend.

There was this girl in one of my first writing classes who made me laugh because she had the exact same problem I have: her face refused to mind its own business. Somewhere along the way, without ever discussing it, we started looking at each other whenever something happened in class: a comment, a critique, something slightly insane. I’d look at her, she’d look at me, and that was enough. She once wrote a story about a kid in the foster system that was so good I remember being annoyed there wasn’t more of it. I would’ve read the whole damn book. 

I never asked her to hang out.

There was a guy from Texas who loved One Piece. I don’t even watch One Piece, but I knew he loved it. He was also a damn good nonfiction writer. I thought we could be friends, but I never said anything.

Then there was this curly-haired girl from Arizona whose writing sounded like the things I pick up at bookstores and wish I had written myself. I learned what kind of music she liked from her zine.

There was a goth girl who came to class in the most amazing corsets and once wrote a poem about an ex with a glass eyeball. At least, I’m pretty sure it was a glass eyeball. It’s been long enough that the details are getting blurry, but apparently not blurry enough for me to forget the eyeball.

There was a guy with a briefcase who moved around like a cartoon character. I don’t know how else to explain that–he just did. He would say anything and everything that came into his mind and then somehow produce the most insane poetry I’ve ever read. He always had a kind smile.

There was someone who wrote a poem about photography that I picked up once and couldn’t put down. There was a shyness to them that I recognized because I think shy people are particularly good at recognizing other shy people while simultaneously refusing to talk to each other, which is incredibly useful.

There was the guy who wore either boots or sandals to class and kept writing about horrible college fraternity guys while suffering from the fortunate condition of not being sufficiently mean or racist to write them correctly. There was the person with the kind face who loved Cuphead. I always wanted to ask about that, but I never did. There was a girl with curly hair and great outfits who carried enough female rage into a room that you could feel it in her writing before you even finished the first page. I always thought she was so cool.

I remember all of them. That’s the weird part. I know I’m shy, although I put a considerable amount of effort into pretending I’m not. My social skills work perfectly fine until I actually want someone to like me, and then suddenly I forget how human conversation works. So, instead, I notice people. I learn tiny things about them from a distance, apparently enough that months later I can still tell you about their poems, their favorite shows, their corsets and their briefcases. I just never seem to make it past that part.

SCAD has a tiny problem for people like me: Ten weeks. You get ten weeks to walk into a room full of strangers, learn their names, learn their work, learn who makes you laugh, who writes things you want to keep reading, who likes the same weird things you do, and who you keep accidentally looking at during critique because you already know they’re making the same face .

You get ten weeks to think, I’ll talk to them next time. I am very good at next time. I’ll do it next class. Maybe next week. Maybe after critique. Maybe if we get paired together. Maybe if I see them outside of class. Maybe if we have another class together next quarter. And then the school year ends.

I’m probably not the person who should be telling anyone how to make friends. I haven’t exactly proven myself qualified, but I do think I’ve become incredibly qualified in how not to make them. So, if there’s someone sitting beside you whose drawing you keep looking at, tell them you like it. If somebody writes something that makes you wish there were fifty more pages, tell them that too. If you keep laughing at someone from across the room, maybe, and I’m very much speaking to myself here, walk across the room.

You don’t have to stop being shy first. I kept thinking I did. I thought one morning I’d wake up and suddenly become the kind of person who could walk up to somebody and say, “You seem interesting. Do you want to be my friend?” without wanting to crawl out of my own skin immediately afterward. That morning hasn’t come. And the quarter keeps ending anyway.

I haven’t used a single name here. Partly because these are their stories too, and partly because I think I’ve exposed myself sufficiently already. But if you’re reading this and you recognized the foster care story, One Piece, Arizona, the corsets, the glass eyeball, the briefcase, the photography poem, the boots and sandals, Cuphead, or the female rage, then I guess there’s no point pretending anymore. 

At some point, in some classroom, for some portion of those ten weeks, I wanted to be your friend. I just never told you. And maybe that’s the only advice I’m actually qualified to give: don’t wait so long to say, “Hi,” that eventually all you have left of someone is the poem they wrote, the show they loved, or the face they made across the classroom.

Ten weeks go by really fast. I should know.