<p>My name is Radu and I am an international student in my sophomore year. Lately, I've started to feel that I have to few friends.</p>
<p>To begin with, I never had many friends. I usually had around 3 - 4 very good friends with whom I'd share my thoughts and hang out. I never felt the need to have more than that. Besides those few number of friends, I'd have a number of people I'd occasionally talk to and meet (e.g. people from my class in high school). </p>
<p>However, when I went to university, we all went in different places. During my freshman year, I've tried to stay in touch with those friends, but inevitably we talked less and less. In my first year of college, I met a number of people of the same nationality as mine and we immediately got along ok. So I guess while everyone was struggling to make friends in their first year, I wasn't all that motivated to do the same, since I had already met a number of people I could hang out with. Consequently, I rejected most of the offers to hang out at events with people from my hall. I didn't join any societies ; I would ocassionally go to the gym or play basketball at university's sports centre. So, I haven't made any friends with those kind of activities.</p>
<p>The first year went by ok. Academically, I was doing great. I had one of the top marks from my class. By the end, I haven't made any friends except some people of the same nationality as mine (only 1 very good friend).</p>
<p>Now, in the second year what I've come to realise is that everyone around me has some sort of new group of friends. We are also all living in private accomodation (I'm living alone), so it's much harder to meet. Therefore, I have almost never hang out with the same people. To make matters worse, the workload in the 2nd year has increased significantly and everything has gotten more complicated. Thus, I didn't have much time to explore new possibilities (such as joining a society).</p>
<p>I've tried to approach people from my course in my year, but the discussions never get past university topics. And among the 150 people (aprox) from my course, I've ever spoken to at most 20%, which makes talking to new people weird (and they have their own groups anyway). </p>
<p>Unlike some people here with similar problems, I don't feel depressed. However, I realize that this is not healthy and I'd like to change it. Do you have any realistic suggestions? (preferrably something that wouldn't require investing loads of effort to accomplish)</p>
<p>Thank you and I'm sorry I couldn't keep this post shorter.</p>