Student Voices: Making new friends at the High School Journalism Institute

Standing in front of my dorm room door at Oregon State University, I ran into my first problem at the Oregonian’s

High School Journalism Institute

: getting it open. Twisting and turning the key didn’t seem to make the door budge and one of the resident assistants, Naia, also attempted to open it. It wasn’t until my dad finally stepped in and managed to figure out the key somehow that we finally got to enter my dorm room.

Once the door had swung open, I glanced around at the beige and white room that I would be inhabiting for a week. It had a wooden bed asking to be made and a desk calling me to set all my bags down. Then I glanced to my right and noticed my roommate.

On my one-and-a-half hour drive from Portland to Corvallis, I refused to let myself think about what the next week would bring. Don’t get me wrong, of course I was excited. But I knew that if I thought about what the High School Journalism Institute would include, I would get nervous.

As someone who came to this camp to meet similar minded journalists, I was stoked to meet new people, but I was also scared because I knew exactly zero people going into the camp.

The first friend I made at this camp was my roommate. Fun fact: no one told me there would be roommates. (It’s okay, but a heads up next time would be awesome.) She was such a nice, friendly face and making my first relationship of the camp helped calm some of my raging nerves.

Soon after meeting her, I headed down to the main entrance to be with everyone else who had arrived. A quick and bittersweet goodbye later, my dad left me standing in a circle full of the other aspiring journalists.

Small, quiet conversations broke out within the group, but I could definitely tell one thing: I was not the only person who was nervous.

I broke my silence when I started to bond with two other girls about shoes. As small and niche as it might seem, I was able to make my first couple of connections and I started to settle in.

Soon after, we were sent to lunch. Eating and talking to each other helped break the ice some more.

But the real event that got us to be comfortable with each other was the fear-inducing ropes course. While I have to admit that the zipline was fun, the metal coils of rope and over-the-top gear made the experience frightening.

We were in the blazing sun and high off the ground, so I guess you could say the ropes course was trauma-bonding. Walking back to the main campus afterward, a sense of community and togetherness settled over the group. I talked to multiple people on the walk back and instead of feeling like complete strangers, I started to feel like we all were classmates, or even friends.

In the evening, when Naia offered to take a group on a sunset walk, I jumped at the idea. Watching the sunset and walking in downtown Corvallis near dusk, I started to have deeper conversations with my fellow campmates. We shared snacks on the 7/11 run and talked about home lives. By the end of the first day, I couldn’t believe I had just met these people.

Now, four days in, I have made more connections. Finding likeminded friends who are reading the same book series, or listening to the same music artists, I wondered why I was so nervous in the beginning.