Friends — how many of us have them?

Being a teacher has, believe it or not, shown me several things to love about kids. I admire, for example, their hopefulness and their willingness to show emotion. The thing I love most about kids, though, is how easily they make friends. 


Making friends as a working adult is tough, something you just don’t think about when you’re counting down the days to college graduation. I remember at my old job there was a woman I wanted to become friends with because we seemed to have much in common and I learned she thought the same thing of me. But we went months without saying more than hello to each other. It was pretty ridiculous. You would have thought we wanted to ask each other to prom. We finally broke the ice in the ladies room, of all places, and made a brunch date. We’ve been best buds since.


I recently joined a new church and I’ve found myself faced with this challenge of making new friends once again, a challenge that’s made even more daunting by the fact that the church has more than 10,000 members. 


Today Jezebel.com features a post titled “How to Make Friends in the Post-Collegiate World.” Two tips offered — be a joiner and reconnect with people from your past — have certainly been helpful for me as of late. I joined a small group at my church and one of the other young women from the group and I had lunch last week to get to know each other better. Since I live in my hometown again, I’m also making an effort to spend time with pals from high school who have also returned to Birmingham. Nothing beats a girls night out with ladies who knew you when you had acne and perpetual bad hair days and somehow made you feel beautiful anyway. 


How do you make friends as a young professional?