Today I'd like to tell you the story of Nathan. Nathan is 18. Last September, he left Rouen, his parents, his little brother and the five friends he had done everything with since the start of secondary school, to join an engineering school in Toulouse. New city, a 12-square-metre room in student housing, a lecture hall of 200 people on the first day. He knew absolutely no one.
Nathan isn't shy in any painful sense, but he is reserved: he says little in groups, hates loud parties, and prefers a real conversation to three hours of "so what are we doing tonight?". In high school, that had never been a problem, because his friends had always been there. In Toulouse, he discovered something new: friendships don't happen on their own, and no one was going to come looking for him.
The first three weeks: the downward spiral
The script is a classic, and you may have lived it. On day one, everyone is in the same boat. By day three, groups are forming, in the cafeteria, in stories, in the common room. By the second week, Nathan felt it was all already decided: the lab partners were paired up, the flatmates had found each other, the WhatsApp groups existed without him. He would get home at 6 p.m., eat pasta in front of a series, and call his friends in Rouen, who were busy building new lives of their own.
The worst was the weekend. One Saturday at the end of September, he counted: he hadn't had a conversation of more than two minutes with anyone his age since Tuesday.
The turning point: friendship is a skill, not a talent
The turning point came from his mother, to whom he had finally admitted on the phone that "it wasn't working". She had been using Cobalt for a few months on her commute and sent him the link to a summary: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Cheesy title, Nathan thought. He listened to it anyway that evening, ten minutes, lying on his bed.
The book is almost a century old, but its central idea turned Nathan around: you make friends by being genuinely interested in others, not by trying to be interesting. For three weeks, he had been waiting to be noticed. Carnegie suggested exactly the opposite: remember first names, ask questions, let the other person talk about what they love, and smile, quite simply. The summary is here: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/how-to-win-friends.
Nathan set himself a very concrete rule for the following week: one first name and one question a day. On Monday, he asked the guy next to him in the lecture hall where he was from. On Tuesday, he suggested to a girl in his lab group that they compare results. Nothing spectacular. But for the first time since the start of term, he was the one making things happen.
Don't try to become someone else
The second book saved him from a classic mistake. After Carnegie, Nathan had told himself he needed to "force it": go to every welcome-week party, talk loudly, be everywhere. He lasted one party, came home exhausted and miserable, and nearly gave up altogether.
Quiet by Susan Cain gave him a permission he had been waiting for without knowing it: you can make friends without becoming an extrovert. Introverts excel in one-on-one or three-way relationships, in deep conversations, in listening. What you need is to choose the right settings: a coffee rather than a party, a regular activity rather than a giant event, and to give yourself time alone to recharge, without feeling guilty. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/la-force-des-introvertis.
So Nathan changed playing field. He joined the school's robotics club, eight people every Thursday evening, and Sunday-morning futsal. Two fixed appointments, in small groups, built around something to do together. That's where first names became faces, and faces became friends.
Making encounters inevitable
Without knowing it, Nathan was applying an idea James Clear develops in Atomic Habits: environment matters more than motivation. You don't make friends through one heroic effort on a Saturday night, you make them through repetition, by running into the same people in the same place every week. Psychologists call it the mere-exposure effect: the more you see someone, the more you like them, and the more they like you.
So Nathan made meeting people easy and withdrawing hard: always the same seat in the lecture hall, next to the same people; lunch in the cafeteria rather than in his room; and one rule for Friday nights, no series until he had suggested something to someone, even a simple "want to grab something to eat?". The Atomic Habits summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/atomic-habits.
Daring to say "I don't know anyone"
One last hurdle remained: going from club mates to friends. Once again, a book provided the key. In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown shows that deep connections are born when we dare to show ourselves as imperfect. Nathan had spent two months pretending to be fine. One Thursday, after the club, he said to Lucas and Amina, his two robotics partners: "Honestly, before I met you, I didn't know anyone here. It was hard." Amina replied that she had cried every night in September. Lucas admitted he had nearly gone back to Lyon. That evening, they became a group. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/le-pouvoir-de-la-vulnerabilite.
One term later
By December, Nathan had a group of six, a lab partner he had chosen, a flat-share planned for second year and a football match every Sunday. He hasn't become the life of the party, and he doesn't want to be. He has also kept his Cobalt habit: one summary in the evening, in bed, instead of scrolling. He says that Mindset by Carol Dweck, which he listened to in November, put words on what he had been through: sociability is not a fixed trait you either have or don't have, it's a skill you can work on. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/mindset.
| The block | The idea that helped | The book |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting for people to come to him | Being genuinely interested in others | How to Win Friends and Influence People |
| Forcing himself to be an extrovert | Choosing small-group settings | Quiet |
| Relying on motivation | Making encounters automatic | Atomic Habits |
| Pretending to be fine | Daring to be vulnerable | Daring Greatly |
| "I'm just not sociable" | Sociability can be learned | Mindset |
What Nathan's story can do for you
If you're starting at a new high school, a new college or in a new city this September, remember three things: genuine interest beats charisma, consistency beats grand efforts, and honesty beats the facade. And if you want these ideas in your pocket, Cobalt summarizes more than 500 psychology and personal development books in about ten minutes each, to read or listen to between classes. The app is available on iOS and Android, with a 7-day free trial: https://www.cobaltapp.io/download.
To go further, our full summary of How to Win Friends and Influence People details Carnegie's principles: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/blog/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-summary.
Nathan is a fictional character: his situation is a composite of common experiences. The books and ideas mentioned, however, are very real.