How to be a good friend!

Humour, caring, loyalty, trust and humour again; these are the qualities that come to mind when I think about what makes a good friend. A friend is someone you can rely on, someone to confide in when you're feeling down, someone you can trust, and occasionally someone to just make fun of you (with boundaries of course). A friend should be someone you can go to to talk about your favorite movie that just came out or to complain about the results you got on your internal, and they listen. It doesn't take much to be a good friend, it just takes being a generally nice person and trusting them more than you do others.

I’m guessing by now you all already know what my speech topic is centered around and are already familiar with the idea of what a good friend is and how a good friend should act. I know you’ve all had this talk since primary school but I think it’s a good reminder to have everyone once in a while.

Now, I’m going to be very honest and straightforward here. I’ve never been good at making friends. I remember my first term here at Queen's was stressful as I was trying to find people to hang out with. I only had a handful of friends from intermediate but then again we weren’t that close. I was constantly trying to change myself to fit into certain friend groups as I had this looming fear that I would be alone for all my high school years. Looking back at that I realise I was a tad dramatic. As I progressed through the years of high school I focused more on myself rather than trying to force weak friendships with people that I had nothing in common with at all and by doing that I began to form strong friendships with people who I could be myself around. 

Now, do I have a treat for you guys. I’ve created five solid tips on making mates.

Ocean's five go-to tips on making mates:

1. Put yourself out there, don’t be afraid to walk up to someone and start a conversation. You don’t know what you could be missing out on if you don’t try.

2. Being friendly would be a good starting point, make yourself seem more approachable to others.

3. Find the common ground with interests. I suggest joining clubs that are of interest to you to find mates. For example I make sure to involve myself in any drama/theatre activities that are around school as that’s what I love doing and what I'm passionate about. Musical was a massive one for me as I found it easy to talk to people of all year levels and talk about similar interests.

4. Be open to people you won’t usually talk to, this kind of contrasts with my previous tip but I think it’s still very important.

5. Lastly, this is going to sound extremely corny but just be yourself. In all honesty there is no point in trying to make friends when you’re pretending to be someone you’re not.

So I hope that my go-to five tips on making mates will help with forming solid friendships as I have. It's such a massive relief when you find people who are on the same wavelength as you. I hope that if you haven't already, that you do manage to find your people, the people who just get you and you can relate to, the people where even just making eye contact makes you laugh, the people if you randomly break into song will then join in without hesitation.

To the Year 9's sitting in assembly today I have some advice when it comes to being a good friend that I would’ve appreciated at your age. Don’t start off your high school years on a bad note with those that you surround yourself with, you all have to spend the next four and a half years together so at least try to get along and be nice to each other. Don’t focus all your energy on repeating bad things other people have said about others and holding grudges. 

I hope you've all taken something from this about being a good friend and how important having good friends are.