Random musings: There are less rules than you might think, but you are right that developing close friendships takes time. On the other hand college can be a

Random musings: There are less rules than you might think, but you are right that developing close friendships takes time. On the other hand college can be a nice ground zero, where you don't need to break into some weird existing cliques where everybody already has shared language based on years of in-jokes. But my friendsip building wad reasonably low-effort, but over long time with consistency :-) I went to bible-study and enjoyed the more personal setting than the "50 people sing hymn together in a church youth-meeting". I am order of magnitude less religious than I was back then, but I still remember the time fondly and keep in touch with some of the people I met there :) I liked to go swimming with few friends that found the idea "swim from one end of 50m pool to the other for an hour" relaxing. Every 300m we stop at the end of the pool and chat. Then we swim again. I had group of ~4 friends I played board-games together. Or we organized lan-parties from time-to time. 3 of us then went for a same programme at the same college and that helped me quite a bit when acomodating in college. I joined for a few longer (several days) hikes with few people from my class. I don't keep in touch as much with them, but knowing there are few people I literally walked like hundred miles along-side is nice :-) I learned a lot just by walking home with a friend of mine and talking Java design patterns and algorithms for path-finding through mazes. We did few projects together, and to this day (10y after we left hs) we still make point of getting a few beers together or going for Puzzlehunt every few months. Close-ness is a difficult concept. I.e. with the friend I talked about I wouldn't call him at 3 AM if I am depressed. I think only one I would wake up like this might be my wife :) Over a beer we probably would discuss if I am burned-out at work or simmilar. I might have few friends I would talk about my kids and raising them and the usual life-stuff. Former colleagues that I grew to know over hundred shared lunches and cofe breaks and later on beers in pubs, occasional hike or going bouldering. I might have maybe one friend I might talk about more intimate stuff, like if I had problems in marriage. We have known each other for around 20 years and we literally met in middle-school. I do wish you luck!