Friendship Requires Self-Knowledge and a Little Courage

The audience for Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship is anywhere from 20-years-old to 85. Most topics are timeless and ageless, and I’ve found that even the topic of “college fit” is nearly universal. Many of us like to reminisce about why we landed where we did for better or for worse. Or we have kids, nieces/nephews, or grandkids going through it now or soon enough.

This explains why people were more excited that I was having Alexis White on the show than when I announced guests who starred in some of our favorite movies or wrote popular books. Many of us are so steeped in the college admissions process that Alexis is the celeb of all celebs in our worlds.

If you don’t know Alexis White, she is a Los Angeles-based college admissions consultant and the founder of A-List Admissions and Tutoring and Alexiscollegexpert.com. She has spent more than two decades guiding students and families through college selection, applications, essays, testing, and the many decisions that come with the admissions process. She has appeared as a college admissions expert on CBS, ABC News and elsewhere. She’s the host of the podcast Admit It! with Alexis White and she gives admissions advice on social media to many, many, many thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok.

Alexis came on Dear Nina this week to discuss one of her mottos—“fit over flex.” I appreciate how she helps families identify where a student is most likely to thrive and not merely which place is the highest-ranked.

As we were chatting about having to understand who you are as a junior or senior in high school as you make these decisions, I thought of a piece of advice from former Dear Nina guest (and one of my favorite authors), Gretchen Rubin.

In Gretchen’s work on habits and happiness, I’ve heard her say a version of, “Know yourself, but push yourself.” This applies so well to the college search. You might be used to a small school, for example, and know you thrive best in small classes, but perhaps you want to push yourself in a larger “rah-rah” school environment.

Or maybe you already know at 17-years-old (as I did!) that while you could certainly push yourself outside of that comfort zone when you need to, you really don’t want that for the next four years. Perhaps you don’t want the tailgating or extremely competitive business clubs, etc, and no amount of “pushing yourself” will make the big school in this scenario the right choice for you.

In a moment of the episode that I clipped for social media, Alexis used the University of Michigan to illustrate the type of situation where a parent might pressure a kid to attend a school despite the kid being certain about wanting a smaller one. And wow—the Michigan fans in some of the comments did not like that example! (That was the case more so on TikTok than Instagram. TikTok is always more unhinged.)

Gretchen’s advice to “know yourself, but push yourself” is wise in all areas of life, including in your friendships.

Knowing yourself might mean knowing you’re not a planner, but pushing yourself to do it a little more often when you realize your friend is tired of carrying that load every single time you get together. It might look like knowing you feel drained after a big party, but going when the host really matters to you. Knowing yourself might mean understanding that new people make you self-conscious, but pushing yourself to be friendlier than you might feel like being because you were once new in this town and you remember what it’s like on the other side.

I could give 1000 more examples, but you get the idea.

It’s an art to honor your social nature, while pushing yourself in the areas where if left to your own devices every time, you might be lonelier, less happy, or—to be quite honest—not a great friend.

For more on all of the above, listen to episode #203 on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts!

• LISTENING: Starting Famesick by Lena Dunham

• READING: Picking up Cazzie David’s essay collection next. See my updated 2026 book list for all the pithy reviews so far this year.

• TV: I am loving Ride or Die on Prime! Thank you to my friend, Julia M, for suggesting it!

Two (recent) anonymous letters you might have missed. (And keep an eye out for the August letter in a few weeks.)

Let’s connect outside of this newsletter: You can find me most often in the Facebook group, Dear Nina: The Group. All the social media links are below. Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | LinkedIn | My Website