I have no life.

If you know me, this isn’t surprising. Then again, if you know me, it means that you’re my mother.

Hi, Ma. Don’t look under my mattress.

It would be nice if I could say my lack of a social life is due to the huge demands on my time that medical school makes. It’s a total lie, of course; my lack of a social life is due to my being a mean and nasty little man.

Then again, it’s my column, so: My lack of a social life is due to the huge demands on my time that medical school makes.

One of the first questions people ask me when they find out I’m a med student is, “So I bet you have to study a lot, huh?” I have to study a lot. I have to study all the time. I had to throw out all those big, glossy copies of Vogue from my bathroom and replace them with a copy of The Pathologic Basis of Disease.

Given, then, that I have to study so often, it’s crucial to my mental and physical health that I find somewhere good to study. Why? Because if I don’t study around people, I will eventually forget what they look like. I will become a doctor who walks into an examining room and attempts to take the pulse of a chair. And if I don’t study well enough, I will fail an exam, and I will become a doctor who is taken away by the police for practicing without a license, and I am much too pretty to go to jail.

My requirements for a study area, or, as I like to call it, my “Hidey-Hole,” are pretty simple and, I think, reasonable. With that in mind, I went around campus looking.

The first place I tried was the Main Library. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Big university, big library, should be fine. Of course, the library is about as suited to studying as a brothel, and for about the same reasons. People at the Main Library can be divided into two groups: Those who go to look good and meet people and those who go to yell into their cell phones.

The people who dress up to go to the library have, I think, stopped even trying to fool anyone into thinking they’re there to study. No book in the world can fit into a Kate Spade handbag. Even if it could, I find it hard to believe you can really concentrate when you’re constantly distracted by the eternal wedgie of your black stretchy pants. God knows I’m constantly distracted by them. On top of that, I have to wonder if it’s really possible to read at all through that much mascara. I don’t think it is.

Those library patrons who use their phones invariably have the same conversation: “Hey! I’m on the phone! And I’m at the library! Hey! I’m walking around! And yet, still on the phone! I’m fantastic!” And then they hang up, only to have their phone ring thirty seconds later, beeping the first few bars of “Fur Elise” over and over. And over.

So studying in the library was hopeless. When I’m not staring at the people, I’m listening to them on the phone.

Next, I tried the Law Library. It’s a new building, and it’s shiny. It’s also populated by law students, who are, by far, the quietest and most studious people I’ve ever been around. They’re extremely serious, and they get very angry when you tell lawyer jokes around them. I got as far as, “What do you have when you have six lawyers buried up to their necks in sand,” before they hit me. I even tried laughing really loudly while reading a forwarded e-mail, but they broke my legs. Then offered to represent me if I decided to sue.

Limping from the Law Library, I wandered into a coffee shop. I’m not going to tell you which one, because I don’t want you people harassing me for my autograph. But it’s not Starbucks.

The coffee shop is the perfect place to study. There’s caffeine available, people are friendly, and if you don’t want to be bothered, all you have to do is talk, loudly, into the air, and nobody comes near you. Personally, I’ve found that shouting, “Are you Norwegian?” works well, but I’ve only been going there for two months.

There is a comfort to being a regular at a coffee shop that can’t really be found anywhere else. It’s an affirmation of your presence in the community. I walk in, and my pot of tea is usually ready by the time I get to the counter.

The conversations you can overhear are wonderfully entertaining. There’s nothing as powerful as hearing a sophomore smugly say he only watches French movies to make you appreciate really horrible American ones.

By far, though, the best part about being a regular is making friends. I’ve come to know the people who work at the shop - Wil, Brooke, Jacki, Summer and Heather, among others. I hear about their ridiculously complex lives. I know that Wil is incredibly excited about his ROTC service, and I know that Summer - well, I just know about Summer. I’ve managed to study and, at the same time, establish a hint of a social life with some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

And therein lies the moral of today’s column. Making friends by just going to a place again and again is entirely a random affair. They’re there, you’re there, you start talking. There isn’t any premise of having anything in common; there isn’t any clique construct that forces you together. The fact that these people, whom I have met completely at random, can be so fundamentally decent says something about people in general: They’re better than you think.

Keep this in mind the next time you decide to adopt cynicism as your hip image. Keep this in mind the next time you think you’d be much more attractive by wearing a sneer. People, in general, are good. They’re friendly. They are worth getting to know. They’re worth suspending your prejudices and saying, “Hello.”

Unless they’re talking on a cell phone, in which case, just kick them in the shins really hard and run.

Rishi Kundi is a medical student. He likes Earl Grey with milk and sugar. And he hates French movies. You can reach him at kundiris@msu.edu.