Do you find yourself at lunch with your friends, zoning out while everyone else is chatting away? While you sit mechanically eating yet another peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Maybe you just know your friends’ lives too well and they haven’t got anything new to tell you. Or maybe you just don’t have much in common with them. If the latter is the real reason, you might need to branch out!

Who are your friends?

Regardless of whether you’re in the popular clique at school or not, the most important characteristic of your friends should be that you enjoy their company. The danger of picking your friends based on how popular they are is that you may find yourself bored to tears every time you actually have to talk to them. Trust yourself to find friends that are a good match for you – as in, you’ve got stuff in common that’s more than skin deep. Make sure that your friends don’t push you into situations that you don’t feel comfortable with, or bring out a part of your personality that you don’t like. Spending time with real friends should make you feel good about who you are, and about who they are!

Is it time to make some new friends?

With that said, if your current group isn’t up to par, think about why that is. When’s the last time you sat with people at lunch who weren’t part of your group? Ever thought about sitting with the cool but reserved kid from your geometry class, who’s practicing for his pilot’s license on the weekends? Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a routine of only socializing within your group, but you might be missing out on other friendships at the same time. If you don’t have a lot in common with your group or clique, or maybe you’ve outgrown it, think about broadening your scope a little.

You might want to start out small. You might even just sit with someone new at lunch. Mix it Up at Lunch Day comes every November, encouraging kids to blur boundaries by sitting with a different group in the cafeteria. You can visit www.tolerance.org/teens/lunch.jsp for more info on the day and how to spread the word at your school.

Keeping your friends

Whether you’ve already found a group of friends that you have lots in common with, or if you’re still in the process of finding the people that you best get along with, make sure that you treat your friends right. The school hallway can be a place of betrayals, cold shoulders, and vicious rumors. Remember that even if you switch groups, or loosen ties to an old group of friends, that you should still treat everyone (past friends as well as new) how you’d want them to treat you. Think about it: would you want to befriend someone with a history of spreading rumors about past friends, or ignoring them for days at a time?