One of the most enjoyable and beautiful aspects of college is the absolute treasure trove of personalities you will meet. When I was an incoming freshman, however, I failed to realize this.
I spent my days in group chats attempting to meet as many people as possible, but as was common during quarantine, political discourse was high. Hours upon hours and days upon days were spent arguing. The worst part is that not a bit of good came out of it. 
In high school, I was never the most socially apt person. I did not really have a friend group until senior year, so I spent my days attempting things that would change that. I got really involved in youth legislature and debate, which led me to become very interested in politics. 
An interest in politics and debating, combined with a suboptimal view of what the real world looked like led me to become a person that would simply search for people to debate with. It did not turn out well. 
This mainly affected my freshman year, but it has also led to some positive changes in my thoughts on political interactions.
Have your opinions, stay informed, but more than anything, know that there are reasons that others have their opinions as well. 
You can disagree with someone, you can think they are blissfully ignorant or just plain wrong, but obtusely bringing these thoughts to the table could very well cause more harm than good. We live in an uncertain world, one in which you never know who you may need to lean on. 
There are also dangers in only surrounding yourself with others that hold the exact same beliefs as you. If you only ever agree with each other, there is nothing to be learned. 
At the end of the day, we are all just a bunch of college kids. We, for the most part, have not seen the world at large, and we definitely do not all share the same experiences. The experiences that we share are those that come from being in college together. 
As college students, we do not universally share almost anything. We do not all share our interests, majors or, of course, our political views. Our struggles are what we can all share.
We all fail to get desired scores on tests, we all miss classes we do not mean to and we all get anxiety from our friendships. We spend long nights studying things we will not remember tomorrow and spend our weekdays longing for the weekends. We should embrace these shared experiences.
Sure, politics are important. Having and voicing our opinions on them is something we are extremely lucky to be able to do. However, through voicing them in the wrong ways, I have only found myself feeling disconnected from thousands of potential friends. 
There are over 23,000 completely different life stories on this campus. Going out looking for debates or simply allowing them to happen when they are unnecessary usually leads to nothing good. 
Of course, in situations where debate leads to meaningful conversations, these conversations can be extremely engaging. However, to waste our time arguing over issues in which the argument changes nothing is just that — a waste of time. 
I would do anything to finish college next year knowing that people will remember me for the memories we have made, not the debates that we had. The fact that I am not sure which impression of me will prevail is one of the biggest mistakes I have made in college.