No New Friends?

This summer has been an interesting one for me. The nature of my research means that I have a ton more free time than normal, which is amazing. But the downside to having two months off from med school is that all of my school friends are off doing their own thing, and because I had no connections to the LA area before med school, I realized that I actually had very few friends in LA.

Drake coined the phrase “no new friends”, and I feel like that’s how millennial society approaches friendship. Friends—real ones, anyway—come few and far between, and once you leave school, you essentially have no chance of making any more real friends, so keep your real ones close and keep the rest of humanity at arm’s length. This is a decent philosophy—that is, if you stay in the same area and never move to a new place. For those of us who do make moves across the country to places where you don’t know a soul, we have to revise that a bit, don’t we?

The Bible says, “He who wants to have friends must show himself friendly.” Even our best friends start as people we’ve never talked to before, and it takes time—and multiple conversations—for people to become acquaintances, and even more of that to become friends. Many people (including me, as I found out this summer) stop right before the first conversation. It’s always awkward, and there’s the nagging fear that the person won’t like you or won’t want to hang out with you or will ALWAYS be too busy to hang out with you. As annoying as this sounds, the way to overcome that is to push past the fear and start reaching out to people. That doesn’t mean that you don’t feel any fear; you’re just not letting it dictate what you’re going to do. You’re taking control of the situation.

So without further ado, here are some tips for people who need to make new friends:

1.     As said above, you’re going to have to take control over your fear (AKA timidity or anxiety) or you won’t be able to do anything. That is NOT the same as pretending the fear is not there; you have to acknowledge your enemy in order to defeat it. You also have to learn where the enemy is coming from. Sometimes, the anxiety can be a relic of some bad experiences in your past. This was my case. I spent a large chunk of my childhood with literally no friends, and people essentially kept me at a distance. College and medical school gave me friends and I thought I was set, but then summer came and I was stuck in LA alone and the anxiety came back. My mom told me to reach out to people and the first time she told me that, I nearly had an emotional breakdown because I was so scared that people would reject me! I had to make myself a positive affirmation that basically said that I am not in middle school anymore and that people will like me, and I had to put that on my wall and affirm that to myself all the time. Only then was I able to start reaching out.

2.     Figure out what kind of people you want to meet, and then go where those people go. Meeting random people is great and all, but if you want to meet friends, the type of people that you would want to be around, you should go to the places you expect those people to be at. If you want to meet skaters, go to the skate park. If you want to meet dancers, take a dance class. If you want to meet Christians, go to church. For those who aren’t set on one “type” of person, religious (and probably humanist) organizations, park districts, and YMCAs are places that have diverse activities for diverse ages and stages of people, so those are great places to start. The Internet (Yelp and Meetup come to mind) can also help you find special interest groups where you can meet people. 

a.     A great way of meeting people is doing community service. Community service is the type of hard work that brings people together in solidarity, and many friendships can be made with volunteers as well as with the people you serve. (Also, people who are serving their communities are probably more likely to be generally nice and good people, especially if they’re volunteers.) A major thing that I did was to volunteer at my church’s youth camp, Encounter. With about 50-100 other volunteers, I helped run a three-day summercamp for 350 teenagers. Along the way, I made quite a few new friends, and got a couple of dope pictures.

3.     Go to where the people you want to meet are, and go there regularly. The reason why it’s so easy to make friends in school is because in school, you see the same people every day, so there’s room to have conversations and develop friendships. As an adult, you have to make that regularity a thing for yourself. The first couple of times are the most awkward, and that’s where most people quit. The people you meet the first week you go may not be there the next week, and you might feel left alone as a result. Don’t give up! Keep going there and introducing yourself to people. In time, you’ll meet other “regulars”, and there’s where the friendship starts!

4.     Do go to the places where the people you want to meet are, but also don’t forget that there may be new friends right in front of you that you haven’t met yet or given a chance. Sometimes, we can be such perfectionists that if a person doesn’t look like a best friend immediately we write them off. Your roommate who you get along with but never really talk to, the custodian you pass every day, the kid who sits next to you in class but isn’t in your “friend group”—all of these are potential friends. Strike up some conversations with them and see how that goes.  

5.     So you’ve met another person, and you like him or her. You vibe well and have good conversations. Good! Get their phone number or email and (if applicable) friend them on social media. How do you ask for their number? After a couple good conversations (and preferably when you’re about to leave), ask them, “hey, can we exchange numbers/emails/social media?” It’s likely that the person will give you at least one of the three, especially if they like you. Numbers, emails and social media enable you to keep up the friendship even if you don’t regularly see the person. They are key if you want to extend the friendship beyond just your weekly church meeting or yoga class. However…

6.     Don’t just get the person’s contact and then never contact them. Text them and start a conversation! A good way to start a conversation over text (without getting a one word response) is, “Hey, how are you? How’s your week going?” (They will then hopefully describe their week, and you can go from there.) You can also send the person an encouraging quote or a funny meme, or even a picture of cute kittens—anything that will brighten their day. On social media, don’t just scroll through their posts. Leave a nice comment on their Instagram post or Snapchat story, and give them the chance to reply to you. In time, you can also set up a real face-to-face meeting as well.

Here's a picture of some cute kittens. Send this to your new friend; they won't be able to resist!

These are just a few of the many tips that could be given. Experts have written plenty about this topic: there’s even a famous book called How To Win Friends and Influence People. I am not one of those experts, but I have been able to apply these tips this summer and see results. I hope this helps somebody.  

World Cup roundup: Round of 16 and quarterfinals

I prayed that the World Cup would continue to offer us surprises, and God certainly answered me. Of the three World Cups I have followed, this is certainly the best one, and that's not just because England are in the semifinals for the first time since before I was born (!!!!).

Wow, wow, WOW. Where do we start?

Let's start with the round of 16. Within four hours on a Saturday, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two greatest players of this generation, were both sent out. Ronaldo and Portugal crashed out to a clinical Uruguay side, while France put four past Lionel Messi and Argentina to send them out in style. This continued a theme from the group games: the teams that relied too much on one star player were going out. The teams that were staying had unified sides with more than one "star".

The next day brought the biggest upset of this World Cup, as Spain fell to Russia on penalties. I came out of church that morning, looked up the results and reeled in shock. Spain and Russia had gone to penalties! Russia had taken Spain, the 2010 champions, to a penalty shootout. Russia then proceeded to cement my shock by winning said shootout. There has been plenty of shock this World Cup, but this topped it all in my opinion. The lowest-ranked team going into the tournament beat the 2010 World Cup champions, who were favorites to win. It was absolute insanity. (Though honestly, I think I can use the words absolute insanity to describe the entire tournament.)

Picture from the Times of Israel.

Less surprising on the same Sunday was Croatia putting Denmark out on penalties. If anything, I was shocked that Denmark even took Croatia that far. Yet again, no team was to be underestimated in this topsy-turvy tournament.

I was very nervous for England going into the round of 16 game. For those who are not familiar with England's recent footballing history, the prevailing theme is disappointment. England had a lot of talent, but after 1990 (the last time they made the semifinals), they could never pull it together. Eventually, the gap between expectation and reality became a source of pressure and fear for England players, to the point where they were at the brink of collapse whenever they played. Whether against a weak team or a strong team, watching England was always a nervy affair and very often a disappointing one. Their performance at Euro 2016 two years ago is the best example of what they'd come to. They barely scraped into the round of 16, where they found none other than Iceland, a country the size of Pittsburgh, PA. When Iceland scored twice in 12 minutes, the team essentially turned into 11 headless chickens, failing to execute any sort of coherent plan and gifting the win to a grateful Iceland team. The fear of failure haunted them throughout that tournament and many others, to the point where the English players literally could not cope with even the slightest danger. These players, who were so talented for their clubs, would mess up for England time after time because the pressure had paralyzed them.

Terrible memories...Iceland after beating England back in 2016. Pic from The Telegraph.

After Euro 2016, no one really wanted to manage the England national team. The unenviable job went to a former youth coach, Gareth Southgate. I'm no football analyst, so I can't tell you everything Southgate did right, but there are a couple obvious things. The first thing is that he made England confront their fears. England in particular were very bad at penalty shootouts, so he made his team focus on penalties in order to break that fear. He was also very realistic about his team instead of pouring too much expectation on them, and he chose players based on merit, not their "possible potential" or "history with the team". His team had some stars (Harry Kane and Dele Alli come to mind), but most of the the team were not so well known before the tournament. It helped that the players had grown up playing for England's junior national teams together and were able to put aside club rivalries in order to be a team.

Going into the World Cup, people liked Southgate and the new-look team, but expectations were very low. I was nervous for the Tunisia and Panama games; England had faltered against nations like these. But instead, they won against Tunisia and absolutely crushed Panama. They lost against Belgium, but Belgium are #3 in the world, so no one was disappointed. Their loss also meant that they finished second in the group, so they went into the half of the draw with the lower ranked teams, which was very good in retrospect. But still, they had Colombia to deal with. 

Colombia are a very good side, with stars such as James Rodriguez and Radamel Falcao, and most pundits would have favored them to win. But they were not at full strength, and as a result, they mostly tried to defend and play somewhat dirty. The game dragged on with the sides getting one goal each, and it eventually went to penalties, England's old enemy. To my shock, England won the penalty shootout! (They'd been in five penalty shootouts in major tournaments and had never won until then.) As my cousin said after that game, "This World Cup is like a kid in primary school who's been told it's opposite day!"

The magic continued into the quarterfinals, where England played Sweden, who were in the quarterfinals for the very first time. I was fortunate to watch this game live, and it was an exciting one. Sweden were great and fought to the end, but England were the better team, creating most of the chances and scoring twice. It ended 2-0, and for the first time in my lifetime, England were in the semifinals! I'm still wearing my England shirt that I took from my brother four or five years ago. For the first time ever, I'm wearing it with pride. No matter what happens now, this World Cup has made me and many others proud to be England fans again, and for that I have to thank Gareth Southgate and his team!

Happy times...Dele Alli celebrates after his goal vs. Sweden (NDTV)

After winning the penalty shootout vs. Colombia (BBC)

I watched that game out in the San Fernando Valley, also known as "the Valley", and I stayed around to watch the last quarterfinal, Russia vs. Croatia. As it turns out, the Valley is full of Russians, and several of them showed up to the watch party where I was, shouting chants nonstop for 120 minutes and a penalty shootout. 

The game certainly fit the crackling atmosphere. Denis Cheryshev scored a beautiful long-range goal for Russia, but Croatia let them know that it wasn't over just eight minutes later via a header from Andrej Kramaric. In extra time, the roles were reversed; Croatia scored first to go ahead, only for Russia to respond with an incredible header from Mario Fernandes via a corner kick from Artem Dzyuba. They were neck and neck until the penalty shootout, and it was exciting and tiring to watch! I knew Russia's game was over the moment that Fernandes shot his penalty wide. Honestly, though, they have absolutely crushed the expectations and silenced all the haters, and they've done so well just by getting to the quarterfinals.

And honestly, I can say that for almost every team. Sweden weren't even in the World Cup for so many years, but this year they went to the quarterfinals WITHOUT their star player, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Croatia had been in the World Cup for a while, but they were always crashing out in the group stages. This time they've declared themselves one of the teams of the tournament; not even the hosts, buoyed by an entire nation, could stop them. Belgium have only become good in the past six years or so; their golden generation is finally reaching the heights they're supposed to reach. Japan, who in the past often looked like a waste of a World Cup spot, topped their group and broke into the Round of 16 for the first time in a while. Even Denmark, who crashed out in the round of 16, are better than I can ever remember them being. Almost all the traditional powers are at home watching while the underdogs get to run the tournament, and for that reason, this is my favorite World Cup ever. (Hopefully the next World Cup will involve more African teams, though. Just saying...)

I end this (somewhat biased) review with a shoutout to a Russian player whose name no one knew before this tournament, the aforementioned Denis Cheryshev. Cheryshev plays for a lesser-known Spanish club called Villareal, and prior to this tournament, he was not playing regularly for them. His biggest claim to fame was getting Real Madrid eliminated from an important tournament back in 2015. He has spent the last five years being shuttled between clubs, and he wasn't guaranteed to get into this Russia team for the World Cup. Even then, he was expected to be a fringe player. Instead, he's been the breakout player of the tournament, scoring four gorgeous goals, including this screamer in the Russia-Croatia game just a couple hours before this piece was written.

Six days before this game, he made a post on his Instagram that piqued my interest as I was scrolling through the 'gram today. His Instagram (@cheryshev90) is not particularly interesting, but the caption on his last photo, taken during this World Cup, caught my eye. 

The caption reads: "Thank you Lord for everything! Phil 4:13: I can do everything through Jesus Christ #togetherwithmyteam." And it's not just this post; a lot of his posts have the caption "thank you Lord for everything." Is it not like God to lift his people out of the dust like that? As Hannah put it in 1 Samuel 2: 

"He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world." (1 Samuel 2:8 ESV)

The Bible also says this:

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much..." (Luke 16:10 ESV)

Cheryshev's previous posts show that he had made a habit of glorifying God in every victory, no matter how many people saw him do it. Now that the whole world can see him, he's decided to continue with what he was doing. Just more proof that God is good to those who serve Him!

ON TO THE SEMIS!