SLAS Times Q2 2019-2020 SLAS Times: Fall 2019 | Page 20

5 Tips for Making New Friends
by Hanon Maruta
M
ost students at SLAS do not come from China
and are in Shanghai temporarily, so the ability to Tip 3: Birds of a Feather Flock Together
make new friends is an important skill to learn. Every It is enjoyable to talk to people who have similar
year, friend groups change as kids come and go.
interests. How does one find a person who has the
same interests? Refer to tip number two. Students
New students often feel nervous and scared when can listen to a conversation that others are having,
thinking about making school friends. Most students and then they can chime in with their own opinion.
report that socializing at school is easy because most Most people would not think of this as spying on a
people are very friendly and open.
conversation, because that is perhaps the way they
made friends with their current group of chums.
After a journalism class discussion, the team came
up with five tips for shy kids making new friends.
Tip 4: Join a Sports Team
Sports and games bring people from different back-
Tip 1: Be Approachable
grounds, and different language groups, together.
In some cases, students are too nervous and scared SLAS has a number of teams that compete around
to socialize with others. For these kinds of students, Shanghai, such as the volleyball, basketball, soccer
they can make friends by looking approachable. and cross-country teams. If one joins a team, they
To be approachable is to always smile and to look will instantly gain new friends they can trust.
happy. Kids who look negative while buried in their
smartphones do not look approachable. People Tip 5: Smile and Make Eye Contact.
want friends that look positive, happy and open (so Make an effort to smile at people in school. A person
put the phone away).
that smiles to another person seems friendlier than
a person who makes brief eye contact and quickly
Tip 2: Talk
looks away. Repeated eye contact leads to small talk,
It is difficult to socialize with someone who refuses to and small talk leads to friendship. If a person never
talk. In the beginning of the school year, people are smiles and never makes eye contact, that person will
looking for friends to talk to. Talking makes people seem unfriendly and closed off.
understand you on a deeper level.