When Jess Metulac, 18, arrived at Iowa State University’s campus in fall 2023, she was eager to find her people. Jess had been seeing movies and videos of life in college her whole life. So when she finally became a college student, she was eager to have a tight friend group like she had seen in the movies.
That fall, she connected with high school classmates also attending Iowa State as an attempt to find a college friend group. Nothing was working quite like she wanted it to. She found herself running through the motions of college. Wake up, class, study, sleep, repeat. Jess’s college experience did not feel like what she had seen in the movies. Then, at the beginning of the second semester, Jess decided to start a conversation with the boy she often would walk home from astronomy class with.
Jess did have a few good friends from high school she still hung out with, but nothing she felt that excited about. But then Ian from astronomy class became the link she needed to create the friends group she was dreaming of. Ian introduced Jess to new people, widening her social net.“Ian created the freshness I needed,” she said. “My friendship horizons have not been widened, and Ian allowed me to do that.”
Jess did not have success finding community in her current friend group, because she already knew them before attending college. Fresh perspectives and new ideas are what make a community unique. Her new friend group, she said, “it’s straight from the screens.”