Adjusting to School

Questions and model answers

1. What helps you settle in when you start somewhere new?

   Routine, more than anything. The first week anywhere is exhausting, because every small thing is a decision — where to eat, which entrance to use, how early you need to leave. Once those become automatic, I've got a lot more energy left for the actual work. The other thing that helps is finding one person early on. Not a best friend, just someone I can ask stupid questions without feeling embarrassed. Once you've got one of those, the place stops feeling like somewhere you're only visiting. When I transferred schools, that was the person sitting next to me in my first class, and honestly, she made the first month completely different from what it would have been otherwise.

2. In a new class, do you wait for people to approach you, or do you introduce yourself first?

   I wait, usually. Which I know isn't the better strategy — I've just never been the person who walks up to a stranger and starts talking. It feels like interrupting. What I've noticed, though, is that waiting works fine as long as you're not actively closed off. If I sit somewhere visible and look up when people come in, someone talks to me within a week or two. It's slower, but it happens. Usually it's whoever ends up sitting next to me twice in the same week. The times it's gone badly are when I've had my headphones in and my head down the whole time — because then I'm not waiting, I'm hiding. And people can tell the difference.

3. Tell me about a time you found it hard to fit in somewhere.

   My first semester at university, actually. Everyone else seemed to have arrived already knowing someone — same hometown, same high school, something — and I didn't know a single person. For about six weeks I basically went to class and went home. I told myself I was being productive, but really I was just avoiding the part that was uncomfortable. What broke it was joining the climbing wall, which I picked mostly because you can't do it alone. You physically need someone holding the rope — you're literally trusting a stranger with your body weight. So conversation wasn't optional anymore, and after a month those were the people I ate lunch with. Sometimes you have to remove the option of avoiding it.

4. Do you think joining a club is necessary to feel like you belong at a school?

   Necessary is a strong word — I'd say it's the easiest route, not the only one. Clubs work because they solve the hardest part for you. You've already got something in common, and a reason to be in the same room every week, so you don't have to manufacture a conversation out of nothing. But I know people who never joined anything and are perfectly settled. They found it through a part-time job, or a lab group, or just the same three people from their course. One friend of mine got there entirely through a shared bus route. What actually matters is seeing the same faces regularly. A club is the most convenient way to arrange that, but it isn't the only one.

The Korean translation, the expression breakdowns, the reusable frames and the common-mistake notes for these four questions are in the book. The recording and this transcript are free, here and on YouTube.