Making and Leaving Friends in the Dual Degree Program - Zaidie

Zaidie is a recent graduate of the dual degree program! She attended the Menton campus of Sciences Po where she majored in Economies and Societies. At UC Berkeley, she completed a Political Economy major with a Sustainability concentration and a Human Rights Interdisciplinary minor. Here she details her experience with, and advice for, approaching social life and finding community throughout the dual degree program.

One of the most common questions we get from students interested in the Dual Degree program is “how do you manage the transition from Sciences Po to UC Berkeley?” Sure, this is a question about academics, day-to-day life, extracurriculars, and much more, as there is another entire blog post dedicated to addressing these themes (and student ambassadors you can be put in contact with by reaching out to dualdegree@berkeley.edu who will be happy to tell you about their own experiences!). But I know that, for at least a few students – some of whom have been bold enough to ask it explicitly at info-sessions or more often in one-on-one meetings with me as a student ambassador – part of that question is more blatantly “how do I make and keep friends in a program like this one?”

Yes, the uniquely split nature of the dual degree makes the prospect of finding and maintaining community a little more daunting, but it’s normal to be uncertain about finding a good group of friends in college no matter who you are and what type of program you are starting. The culture of a student body made up of peers from all over the country, let alone the world, is inevitably going to have some differences from what you’re used to. Not to mention, the transition from high school to university is often an opportunity for a transformation in personality, values, and interests for many students. You have just spent months on end shaping your life’s story into a narrative that reads clearly on college applications and repeating iterations of it so many times you can hardly remember that you’re more than the neat package you can fit in an essay or an elevator pitch (the admissions review process is very much holistic, but at least in my experience it’s inevitable that selling yourself comes with a lot of simplifications). You’re likely leaving an environment where everyone has known you for at least four years, and now you’re suddenly free of the burden of who you were as a freshman in high school. A little reinvention is a normal part of the process of growing up, but alongside the challenge of getting to know this evolved version of yourself, you’re also introducing yourself to, and learning to navigate, a whole new social environment. Finding your place when you don’t even know what that should look like takes some time and you might not get it right immediately. Whether this anticipation is manifesting itself as pure excitement or terror, you’re going to get through it, and it can be a lot of fun.

A quick disclaimer: there are many ways to be a dual degree student, and my experience in social adaptation is specific to my being 1) an American with little to know previous experience with French culture/education and 2) at the Menton campus.

Arriving at Sciences Po

While I’m on the topic of socializing at Sciences Po, I’ll happily take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about student life at the least popular (but quickly growing!) of the three Sciences Po campuses that students in the Dual Degree can attend: Menton. With about 300 students, the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regionally focused campus in Menton includes about ⅓ French students, ⅓ students from the region of focus, and ⅓ other international students, like each of the regional campuses. However, it’s important to note that these dividing categories are not always as concrete as they are made out to be: many of the international students have attended a French lycée, and many of the French students have lived abroad, often in the region of focus. This is not to say that everyone, or even a majority of students at the Menton campus, are jet-setting global citizens, but simply that describing the cultural composition of the student body along the lines of region of origin doesn’t make much sense once you arrive in Menton. Sciences Po prides itself on the diversity of its student body, but diversity comes in many forms. Certainly, students at the Menton campus came from many different academic and national backgrounds, something that showed up most clearly, to the benefit of us all, in the classroom. We each brought expertise on things that other students had never even heard of (I, for one, had skipped the year of high school history that reviewed the French Revolution, which made my first semester history class full of French-educated students more than a little intimidating). Being on such a small campus likely also had something to do with it, but in terms of values and world-views, gathering an international group of students who would choose to attend the “Paris Institute for Political Studies” turns out to be quite a homogenizing force. Certainly there were differences in political stances, but debating these issues in students’ spare time was a much more popular form of socialization than it might otherwise have been. 

So how are you going to find your friends in Menton? You’ll get started quickly: attend as many events of the Rentrée Solennelle as you can summon the social energy to – there are events during the day as well as in the evening, if one event doesn’t seem like your thing, there’s no pressure to attend, but I would encourage you to push yourself. Definitely attend the iFamily events – these are opportunities to get to know both other first years and experienced second years in a more intimate and casual setting. Challenge yourself to join conversations with as many new people as you can, about topics you aren’t familiar with, even in a language you’re not too comfortable with – it’s funny now to remember some of the unexpectedly meaningful conversations I had in my first week with classmates I didn’t necessarily end up being close friends with, but who still remained a valuable part of my social network at Menton. 

Another thing to consider is housing. While student housing at Menton can have its downsides (less privacy, shared amenities, stricter rules about having friends over), apart from being less expensive than an apartment, student housing also offers the opportunity to meet other students right off the bat, including those you might not otherwise; First year classes at Menton are split up into English and French track, and getting to know students in the other track can be hard, although this social division tends to fade as the academic division does in the second year. Through living in Villa Jasmine, the student house for female-identified students in Menton, I met some of my closest friends at Sciences Po, including the friend who I went on to share an apartment with in my second year. Friendships whose foundations were built in my first year – through shared late nights of exam studying (and procrastinating) in the Villa study room, chatting in the campus courtyard during breaks from lecture, walks to and from association meetings – were deepened during my second year through shared escapades through the narrow winding city streets, avoiding covid cops (don’t worry, we kept our bubble small) to get to dinner parties that often turned into sleepovers and then impromptu brunches, midnight dips in the sea, and even more crazy budget travel adventures.

Leaving Sciences Po

For those who don’t know, the Sciences Po program for non-dual degree students includes a mandatory third year at a school outside of France, so the curriculum for all students, not only dual degree students, only spans two years. Being a dual degree student is much more apparent while at Berkeley (even as a fourth year I still felt years behind my non-dual degree peers everytime it came to navigating the confusing one-way streets of Berkeley) than at Sciences Po, where, as I like to say, your only difference in experience from non-dual degree students is that in second year, when your friends are stressing about applying for their third year abroad, you already know where you’ll be for the next two years.

Still, the prospect of your friends scattering across the globe can be as terrifying for dual degree students as everyone else – you may have a few friends heading to Berkeley with you, but for the rest, it can be unmooring to not know when you’ll be able to fly across an ocean to visit the friends you used to run up the street to see at any time of the day or night. When you do finally leave Sciences Po, balancing maintaining these important relationships and maintaining your sanity as you work on making new friends at Berkeley can take some practice. For me, I ultimately had to learn to accept that there were some people who it felt easy to message and call casually on a regular basis, and there were others, even among my closer friends, with whom it was more difficult, often simply based on our personalities and communication styles. Trusting that this didn’t mean our relationships were over took some time. But in the two plus year since I’ve left Menton, I’ve been so lucky to have friends all over the country and the world who I’ve been able to visit and often stay with, and to find that our friendships were still strong and even renewed by our mutual growth over the years since we’d seen each other. Also keep in mind that relationships change and that’s ok – you won’t be the same person at the end of your time at Sciences Po as at the end of your time at Berkeley and beyond, and that might make it hard to find the same rhythm with someone you don’t see often – but that doesn’t make your time with your little Menton family any less meaningful. 

Arriving at Berkeley

Now, on to Berkeley: when I started the program I was the only student in my year in the Berkeley Dual Degree program at the Menton campus, so, unlike almost any other student since, I was truly arriving at Berkeley on my own! Like at Sciences Po, you’ll go to Golden Bear Orientation in the week before classes start. Don’t worry about feeling out of place surrounded by first years: you’ll be in a group with only dual degree students and other transfer students. This was a great opportunity to meet not only other dual degree students (who you’ll also get to know through dual-degree welcome events) but possibly more importantly other transfer students. Realizing that you’re not at all out of place as an incoming third year student, including when it comes to joining on campus clubs and organizations, is very reassuring. At a school as big as Berkeley, no one’s ever going to see you as the new kid. Even though I didn’t become super close with my GBO group outside of the dual degree students, I’ve bumped into many of them over my years at Berkeley, and ended up befriending many other transfer students throughout my time there.

Get involved with clubs! Go to info sessions for as many organizations, research opportunities, publications, etc. as you can. I was very surprised to find myself rushing an International Relations focused professional fraternity, but it turned out to be one of the most important parts of my time at Berkeley and was where I made some of my closest friends. I also joined the Human Rights Investigations Lab where I did research for the next two years, and other clubs – CAL ACLU, the Berkeley Political Review, and others – not all of which I stayed highly involved with but which were important to me in getting my bearings not only in terms of my extracurricular activities but also the people I spent time with. Finally, I met many close friends through the coop I lived in. Being forced to interact with new people from the moment I arrived at Berkeley made socializing impossible to avoid, and I got to know students in fields and majors I might not have interacted with otherwise.

Remember: you are most likely not the same person when you arrive at Berkeley thatyou were when you arrived at Sciences Po, the same approach to getting to know people that worked for you as an 18 year old, completely new to college, might not work for you as a 20 year old with a couple years of independence and the accompanying self-discovery under your belt. Generalizations are dangerous, but I think it’s fair to say that the common personality traits, values, and experiences of the student body at Berkeley are different in some ways than those of the student body at Sciences Po, and you might find that different parts of your own personality flourish in this new environment. As with any new setting, you might not find your best friends immediately, but the relationships with people with whom you’ll go room shopping, help with club applications, go to your first frat party, and share your hopes and fears for this new chapter of college, are just as necessary and can be meaningful in their own ways.

To conclude, anxiety about finding your place and your people on a new campus, let alone in a new country, is normal. Remember you’re not the only one feeling it. The most important thing is that you talk to new people, push yourself out of your comfort zone, accept changes as they come, and appreciate each part of the experience in its own way.