Social Penetration Theory & My Big

A few months ago I took my first steps on the campus of San Jose State University. I was a transfer student from my hometown of Hayward, California, about thirty minutes from San Jose. This was not the first university that I attended, but rather one that I know I wanted to be apart of. A university that within a few years, I knew I was going to graduate from. Now in high school I had a lot of friends. Most people who graduated eight grade with me went onto the same high school as I did. Because of this reason of course it wasn't hard to make friends. I kept most of the friends I already had in middle school and made a few more along the way. After high school making the transition from knowing mostly everyone to knowing no one was a huge shock for me. In my first few years of college I made what I would call "acquaintances", but no one that I truly called a friend. Because I didn't care too much about school life at the time, I felt no need to make friends. I would go to school, leave, and be completely fine with that. Transferring to a whole new area and new school I was forced to adapt to a new lifestyle  and this time in hopes to develop new friendships. 

Now making friends wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be due to the fact that I was a commuter. I didn't have much time to spend on campus because I didn't live in the area. After the few days of realizing the difficulty I knew I needed to do something about it. Everywhere on campus I seen flyers about joining a sorority. At fist I didn't think it was my thing, but I took an opportunity to try it out. After going through the process of choosing a house, I finally chose Delta Gamma. Every girl seemed to be really nice and someone that I would get a long with. Now I was  extremely excited because I just acquired about 80 new "sisters", but just calling them this wasn't going to necessarily going to make us close. We had to learn about each other and share information for our friendship to blossom. There was someone in particular which I was able to create this instant bond with.

I can't really explain what it was that drew us together, but it was definitley something. This lovely lady's name is Ari. She became the first real friend that I made in this house. When I first met her we shared information like where we were from, how old we were, and what we were studying in school. After many times of hanging out with her we started to share more information about ourselves. I would tell her thing like what my favorite color, food, and hobbies were. She then shared the same information and we came to find that we had a lot in common. When it came time to choose a "big sis" in the house I knew who I wanted. After a few issues, she was someone who I could officially call my "big". I was sooo excited because she was someone I really created a friendship with. Even though we didn't know EVERYTHING about each other at that time, we still knew we were meant to be. As time as gone on we are starting to share even deeper information about of lives. This includes fears, close stories to the heart, and etc. If it wasn't for her I don't think I would be as outgoing in the sorority as I am today.

This whole process of making new friends in a sorority and especially creating such a deep bond with Ari is exactly like the social penetration theory. This tells us that we develop deeper relationships with people when we reveal information that is sensitive to us. I was able to start creating friends with the whole sorority by sharing basic information about myself. With Ari we revealed information about ourselves that we don't necessarily share with everyone. This is what helped create that bond and friendship between us.  We both self-diclosed ourself by voluntarily sharing things about ourselves without the other person asking for it. Social penetration theory explain why we are so close. 

Before I took COMM 101C I didn't realize that there was an actual process to creating intimate relationships with someone. After learning about this theory and applying it perfectly into my life currently, I am able to see how true these theories are in life and how they can help anyone understand true friendships.