{"id":8120,"date":"2025-07-22T21:01:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8120"},"modified":"2025-07-30T15:08:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:08:00","slug":"making-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/making-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make 90 new friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cate Slaughter of Charlottesville, Virginia, said she has a simple and journalistic method when meeting people at cherubs: In lectures or in the dining hall, she sits next to new people and asks them questions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are you from? Do you have siblings? What do you do outside of journalism?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Slaughter said writing ice breakers down in her notes app before arriving at the program helped her navigate first conversations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds silly,\u201d Slaughter said. \u201cBut that helps me calm my nerves when I\u2019m meeting a lot of new people all at once.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike Slaughter, Nikhil Daniel of Orlando, Florida, said he does not have a lineup of ice breakers or a one-minute elevator pitch pre-prepared. On the first day, when he introduced himself to a cherub in the Jones elevator, Daniel resorted to politics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an awkward start, but a happy ending,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel said the cherub he met on the first day is now one of his closest friends in the program. He said his advice to future cherubs is that while religion and politics are not great leading topics when introducing yourself, \u201cif it works, it works.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex Fagell of Washington, D.C., said getting access to the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion with a group of cherubs on the second day created the foundation for their friendships.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt provided a chance to see what made each person unique,\u201d Fagell said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alexa Gola of Chicago said the scramble of the All-day Story was one adventure that introduced her to people across all floors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it was so fast, we had to ask each other for help,\u201d Gola said.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the end of the program, Gola said her friends aren\u2019t just those who live next to her. She added that when she walks into the Jones elevator, she and her friends press three buttons. One for each floor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cherubs recount their experiences making friends while on adventures and during awkward conversations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":8373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[501],"class_list":["post-8120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":501,"user_id":263,"is_guest":0,"slug":"beatricesopko","display_name":"Beatrice Sopko","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d68937f7e1c64edca9917491cac923b9315acbdf1eca9d435f3293e2c8789e7?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Sopko","first_name":"Beatrice","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10322,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120\/revisions\/10322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}