Van Nguyen, eighth-semester illustration/animation major from Vietnam
Disclaimer: Van Nguyen is a designer at The Daily Campus
Tell me about your experience with making friends at UConn.
“I have two very different university experiences because I first started in UConn Stamford, and then I moved to Storrs and for my third semester. I would say UConn Stamford was the worst time. I started off college [during] COVID and I had to be in Stamford, even though I had all online classes but one in person. So when I was in [the] Stamford dorm, it was very hard to make friends because you’re not even allowed to go to other people’s rooms. I came [to Storrs] during spring of 2021, so it was very abrupt. It was in the middle of the year. The only friend that I was able to make was a housemate of mine. Her name is Astrid. Love the girl, but it’s not like we were tight besties or anything. It was hard for me to make friends. I [felt] like everyone in Stamford was a little bit closed off. During the first semester I only was able to make one single friend and that was my housemate, Astrid. Then the second semester came along. I try to go out more. I try to make some friends…
“…The only people I truly interacted with, like once or twice, or hung out with was my sister’s friends because my sister was an alumni here and she graduated early…So I hung out with her friends, but only once or twice because they were way older than me. The things that they did, it was not really like what I was doing at the time. So yeah, it was a pretty lonely start to college for me…
“…But things started to change during my junior year fall of 2022…I just thought about how terrible my first three semesters were, so I kind of told myself that I [did] not want to be like that anymore. It was miserable. I felt like I wasn’t making the best use of my time in college…
“…But yeah, making friends now is really easy for me, once I actually stopped seeing the negatives in other people. I just stopped seeing everything as like ‘Everyone here is sucky, everyone here just like probably hates me or something.’ I did not make any effort trying to be friends with people. But overtime, I definitely opened up more. I look at people in a brighter light, and it’s been very enjoyable so far.”
Tell me about your initial perspective on making friends in college.
“I thought it was being edgy. I thought I was being cool. Really, I was just being so fucking pretentious and so full of myself to think that everybody sucks, nobody understands me…
“…But I was so miserable. I would not get out. When I first moved to Storrs, I did not leave Storrs, I did not leave this downtown, this whole campus, for five months…I stayed here for five whole months because I [lived] in downtown. I got all the shops around me. I got the food, I got CVS. I got [a] grocery store and also health stuff. So why do I need to be going somewhere when I already have everything I need? That was my thinking at the time, like I [didn’t] need shit. I just needed to finish my degree. focus on that and then get the fuck out of there. But I was wrong, because [the] college experience is not just about study. It’s not just about your degree. And I realized how miserable I was because my friends back home could not stay in contact as often. The only people I talked to were my ex-partner and also my family, and occasionally one or two friends from back home. So I thought that that’s all the communication I [needed], but everything, all of those communication that I just listed, they were all online. My partner was not here. They could not visit me at all for like five, six months and I could not visit them…
“…So over summer I stayed with my sister, and I talked to her about those things. And she was like, ‘yeah, you really need to go out there and put yourself out there more often. You need to actually learn how to accept other people and accept the fact that you have to put yourself out there if you don’t want to continue to be like this.’ Because in my mind it was like, the people will just come to me, but I never had the thought of like, I need to come to people first sometimes too…
“…It definitely felt good to actually talk to people and see the fact that, like damn, I’m not that fucking different. Like, who the fuck did I think I was? I’m not just like one in a million. Everyone is a good vibe. Everyone is a great fun to talk to, and I was just being so emo and so in my head for thinking otherwise. So yeah, it took a long time for me to realize that. I think it was just also because I moved to a whole different country to a whole different culture. So, I just really just try to stay with what I already know instead of touching the unknown. But you know what, college is about exploring those things. So sometimes, changing such a huge perspective of the world is what you need to do to be making friends, to be more open and learn more about yourself.”
Tell me about the best friendships you made here.
“I have to say Benjamin Menor and Shannon Hong, Benjamin Menor is essentially like me, if I was a six-foot-three, white, gay man with a great stash and a great sense of style. He showed me the kind of unconditional support and love that I have never received from a friend before. I have friends who I’ve been with for 10 years, but the way that he went so above and beyond for me sometimes, it really made me feel so seen and he reciprocated the love that I have for him…
“…Let me just give you one example [of] what this man [does] for me. I slept over [at] his house because he had to babysit his baby brothers. He [had] to wake up at 6:00 to be making them breakfast and getting them ready for school. I did not have to wake up early with him at all, but I did tell him to wake me up when he [had] to bring them to school. Obviously I woke up at the very last minute, but when I woke up, he said ‘I made you a matcha latte. It’s on the counter. Get ready so that we can go.’ I’m like, damn, he made me my favorite drink the way that I like it to be, like first thing in the morning without me asking for it. He is the definition [of] if they wanted to, they would have because he always showed me consistently that he would have done these things over and over and over again for me…
“…Next up is Shannon Hong. I love this girl to death. She is so funny. She is honestly so funny…Shannon also went above and beyond for me. [It’s] so funny, whenever I just spend time with her, our bit is that we’re married and then we’re divorced. Whenever I disagree with her, I’d be like, ‘I need a divorce,’ and she [is] like, ‘again?’ … It’s always such a good time to have her around and she just cracks me the fuck up. But she also lets me talk about my problems 100 times and over. She [has] seen me on my worse. Oh, I was ugly. Not in like a physical way, but it’s just like, when I was at my worst, like at the bottom of my life, she saw it. She [saw me] through it. But she also let me just keep talking about the same situation a hundred or a thousand times, or however much time I need, over and over. We text every day still…She’s more indoorsy. So she doesn’t really go out to drink with me and stuff. I [loved] nights with her [when] we would cook some dinner. We made lasagna kimchi, kimchi soup…
“…But one thing I do love about her is that she [lets] me do makeup on her. She loves it. She loves having me doing makeup for her. Like I remember when we first started to hang out and stuff, I would always do an eyeliner look on her…I also did her hair, her makeup, her nails for her graduation, too. I love beauty stuff, like that is not a secret. But I love it more when I could make my friends feel pretty, and she’s definitely, like, my top customer. And it’s also really fun to connect with her because her mom is from Vietnam. They’re Chinese, but her mom and dad were born and raised in Vietnam before they immigrated here. So she also grew up knowing a lot about Vietnamese food, and we always bond over food. Big back activities. Our favorite thing to do was going to Buckland Hills to Hungry Pot. We would devour three plates of crawfish as like a pregame to the whole hot pot shit…It’s so funny because we tried to find a dress for graduation pictures, that did not happen at all, but we went to try to find a dress on a Monday and then we were in Buckland Hills after [and] I was like, ‘how about we get some hot pot?’ And she’s like, ‘no, we need to save money.’ I was like, ‘you’re right.’ And then we both turned around and we went to hot pot anyways. I would say one of my favorite [activities] to do with her is just like eating, like cooking and stuff…
“…But yeah, they’re definitely my biggest, biggest loves from UConn and just in life in general. Cause like. There [are] so little friends that I could name that could touch my heart and actually make me feel the things that I feel for them.”