<p>I'm wondering how a (shy) student deals with lunch/dinner in terms of managing to find people to eat with at a huge school with many dining options -</p>
<p>My S is at summer session at a big state U and his roommate didn't show up so he doesn't have an automatic social contact ... he has two classes at opposite ends of the day (8 am and 4 pm)... and people he's talked with in class are from different dorms and not in the dining commons when he goes. things are likely to get even more confusing when thousands of students arrive for the fall semester.</p>
<p>He seems OK with it but I wondered if you students can pass on any suggestions....</p>
<p>What about eating with the other people who live in his dorm/hall area? Most of the hall I lived on as a freshman went to meals together. Someone would pop his or her head out into the hall and ask if anyone else wanted to grab food. Usually at least two or three people were eager to get food with someone else.
If he wants to eat with someone who lives across campus, sometimes it helps to plan a meal time a day in advance and then just meet the other person for a meal.</p>
<p>He might not have a roommate, but he must have neighbors in the dorm. Tell him to go knock on some doors and introduce himself and find out when they eat.</p>
<p>I don't think some of the above suggestions will work. If he's very shy, he won't want to just pop in and introduce himself to people he doesn't know. Although, I must agree that eating with people on his floor is definitely the best option.</p>
<p>If he's unable to do that, then he should probably just go alone. This might however be embarrassing, especially if he goes to a dining hall frequented by alot of people. Maybe he should find a time to go when the place isn't very crowded, like at the beginning of the dinner session.</p>
<p>However, the best thing is to find people to go and form friendships from that time spent together.</p>
<p>It'd be really weird if I were sitting down eating and somebody just came up and sat down with me and started eating, whether I was alone or in a group. That just doesn't happen where I go (which is a big school with dining halls.) Most everybody goes it groups of friends or meets up there, not just gets there and sits with someone they don't know. He just needs to make friends with as many people as possible in his hall and then they'll start inviting him (or they'll start inviting them) whenever everybody goes and eats.</p>
<p>When I see someone eating alone at work, when I am about to eat alone at work, I walk up to them and say, "hi, do you mind if I sit here?" Yes, it does take a tiny bit of guts to introduce yourself to a complete stranger, but it is rather effective in meeting people (perhaps those who are even more shy than you, but also want to make friends).</p>
<p>I go to ASU, and trust me, it will be easier to find people to eat with when actual school starts. People from random classes of mine will be walking towards the same vendor, and we'll eat together, or they'll come sit with me. It's also nice at dining halls where seating is limited, and someone you sort of know may be sitting alone, to approach and ask to sit down because of the lack of space. That's a much easier situation to join. </p>
<p>However, one of the things I tried to get ready for before going to college last year was eating alone. It happens a lot. Difference of schedules and different eating patterns make it hard to schedule meals with others. So, I tried to get used to it. Bringing a book/ipod will help pass the time, or studying always works. </p>
<p>Oh, and during the year, if he's living on campus, a Residential Assistant should be trying to congregate the floor he's living on. Our whole floor went to a dinner once, and after that, we all met for dinner everyday at 5pm. </p>
<p>Hopefully he can stick it through til the school year starts. People then will be more likely to approach him if he's too shy to do it himself, because of the 'beginning-of-the-school-year' vibes.</p>
<p>if they have a common area in his hall, maybe he could start doing his reading there. eventually, someone will start talking to him and it could open him up a little :)</p>
<p>I almost always ate with people who lived on floor on the dorm, not necessarily my roommate. However this was almost always dinner. Depending on my schedule I would ate breakfasts' and lunches by myself or whoever on my floor who had class at the same time in the morning and for lunch usually whoever I knew who happened to be at the dining hall at the same time. I often had lunches by myself because I had class on other campuses and didn't have the time to really wait around for a friend to eat with.</p>
<p>I'd like to reiterate what several of the previous posters stated. He'll probably eat with people on his floor, it's the easiest way to find others who go to the same dining hall (obviously). When I was a freshman last year, when I ate at the dining hall, I always ate with friends from my floor or my fraternity brothers from other dorms if they happened to have class breaks that coincided with mine.</p>
<p>Also, and this is something that I learned in the first few days and weeks of starting college, as hard as it is to pop your head into someone else's room to ask if they want to go eat, it will make the person asking seem to be much more outgoing. In my experience, people who are shy tend to feel much more comfortable around others who are outgoing, the kind of people who will ask them if they want to go to dinner, or hang out, etc. I'd hedge my bets that your son would go if asked by someone, and I'd also bet that if he asked someone else, they would go as well. It just takes the courage to be the one to ask, he just needs to remember that almost all the other freshmen on his floor will be just as shy as he is, and as such, will be just as appreciative of his asking as he would be.</p>