You've Got a Friend In Me

Friends are the best part of the Disney College Program. I would not have lasted for my whole program if I did not make friends. I would have become too stressed and packed up and went home early.

Okay, maybe I am being melodramatic. The program is not that hard but it is definitely easier and a lot more fun with a good group of friends.

There is such a diverse group of people that work on the College Program and for Disney World in general that it is very easy to make friends. People you live by, people you work with and people you meet on the bus can relate to you because they are all going through the same things.

• For me, it was easy to make friends with the people I lived around first. They are some of the first people you meet and you are always around them. You try to get to know them quickly since you will be seeing them almost everyday.

• The people I worked with took a little longer to become friends with. At the Jungle Cruise you have to prove how good a skipper you are going to be. Most skippers who have been there for awhile will be friendly but not overly accepting until they have worked with you for awhile. Mike, the skipper in the Jungle Cruise link above, was one of those people. When I started he didn't try and get to know me until we had worked together a lot. We are now great friends. Eventually everyone gets accepted as a "skip." Some of my best friends are from all over the world that I worked with at the Jungle. People from all over America, England, Australia, Bolivia and Portugal, just to name a few. On the College Program we would hang out on all the time at each other's apartments, or we would rent a cabin at Disney's Fort Wilderness. Our group of friends looked a lot like the kids on "It's a Small World."

                                          A metaphorical picture of my Jungle Cruise friends

• Finally, the last group I made friends with were people I rode home with on the bus. I've said before how closely packed the buses are, especially at night, so you get very close to the people you sit or stand beside. I made one really close friend while riding the bus home after work. We still keep in touch.

Final advice: make friends on the CP! They will be some of your closest friends and will greatly improve your experience at Disney.