How to Make Friends in a New City

Moving to a new city at any time in your life is a challenge. However, when you are first out of college, moving away from all of your best friends it can be even harder. And since I just did that I thought I would share with y'all how I'm making new friends.  As a very social person, I knew when I moved to Denver I would have to put in a ton of effort to make new friends. I cannot survive without hanging out with people, talking and just being around other people that I know and love. So I created a plan long before I moved out here or even knew I was officially moving out here. First, I decided to join Bumble BFF, second was joining organizations and those are the two things I'll be giving advice on in this post. And please, share with me how you've made new friends in your respective cities because I am always looking for advice/new besties.

Bumble BFF

You may or may not know this but the dating app Bumble has two other components to it. The first is networking (yeah, I know), which I don't use and the second is BFF. This is a part of the app that let's you find friends in your area. You make a profile just like you would on the dating side but this is for you to find friends. Then you do the simple swipe right, swipe left, read through bios, look at their photos, etc. Personally, I think we are much better at choosing our friends than our potential significant others. Once you make a match, either of you can start talking and then who knows where it will take you. I've met two people on the app that I'm already really close with, plus, I'm still on the app looking for more friends. I'm sharing screenshots of my profile below so you know what it's like. And let me just say, saying you want to go apple picking/pumpkin patching is a huge help for getting matches. We ladies love that stuff, hahaha. 

Organizations

My second step was looking into organizations to join. First, I researched my area to see if there was an alumni association chapter for my university and low and behold there was! I am now a proud member of the Rocky Mountain Texas Exes. If you live in a major city and went to a fairly large college there is a fairly large chance there will be an alumni chapter for you. The Exes here hold watch parties for our games and through those I met two wonderful gals I'm now really good friends with. One I share a mutual friend with, the other we had never heard of each other. But now we watch Love Island, eat Taco Bell and drink wine together. It's been wonderful.  Second, I joined a chapter of the American Association of University Women, which I was part of in college. My chapter is full of adorable older women whom I love. They've already got me helping with the state's facebook page and donating toiletries. It's been wonderful. This is a great org to get involved with if you a) have a college degree and b) care about women's rights. All of the women in the chapter are incredibly smart and are great for connections for your future. I would highly recommend, they have a lobby branch in D.C. that works toward getting equal pay for women (hopefully by 2030).  Third, I joined the Colorado League of Women Voters, another feminist centered organization. I had the help of some of my AAUW ladies to join and I'm trying to be very active. A lot of women just donate, which is amazing & fine, but I was dead set on actually helping with the effort. I'm planning to learn how to register people to vote and I'm going to work on their social media as well. The LWV is so important in every state so please think about joining. It's amazing. Lastly, I plan on joining a few more groups but those I'm still deciding on. I would highly recommend MeetUp, it's a place where people can create organizations for almost anything. I'm thinking about joining a few of them but I might be at my time limit at the moment. Other than that I'm still doing my research. But if you live in Denver and have an org you think I'd love please reach out. Hope these tips help you - xoxo darling, Hayden.