I’ve read a lot of threads on this, and it seems several students appear to be in the same situation as I am. That is, we seem to have few to no friends, but need help figuring out how to change that. I’ve read a few of the posts and I’ve used the suggestion I’ve seen, but none of them appear to be working, so I wanted to lay out my particular situation to get specific advice, so I can hopefully use them next semester to turn this around.
At the beginning of the year, there was a freshmen activity specifically for students in the school of engineering so I went. It involved two days of “team building” activities and it was nice, but we really didn’t get to socialize outside of our small groups so I talked to maybe 3 students. We made a group chat but none of us talked after the activity since we all had different majors and as a result different classes.
I’ve tried joining clubs that I have interest in, hoping to meet people that I share that with. At one point, a small group of us had created a game of thrones club just to hang out and watch the show and talk about stuff involving it, but it fell through. It turned out that we weren’t all at the same campus (I go to a large school and they didn’t separate the new student facebook by campus so it was hard to know who was going where unless they stated) and therefore the meetups just never happened and we stopped talking.
I also joined a club that was associated with a certain program I’m in since I did not take the class first semester and I wanted to meet people in the program, as well as learn about opportunities to complete the program requirements. I went to the meetings and a lot of their planned activities were way off campus without a bus route that would drop someone off near it, so I ended up not participating in those (We had to provide our own transportation and I’m not from the state, nor do I have anyone that would give me a ride).
I’ve also considered becoming a TA or a tutor since I happen to be good at calculus, programming and German since that would give me the option to communicate with more people, especially people studying similar subjects as I am, but unfortunately, my school prevents freshmen from participating in those roles. I could always do it next year which is something I plan on doing, but it would’ve been nice to be able to do it now.
In terms of meeting people inside of the classroom, I seem to be struggling with that as well. I show up early since that’s the type of person I am, and I’ll talk to the people around me (simple questions like how their weekend was and how they felt about last weeks test, and continue off of that.) However, I never seem to really make friends from said conversations. At most I just become the person they ask when in need for clarification on a topic. Also, I don’t really get a chance to connect with fellow freshmen because all of my classes are sophomore and junior level due to AP credit. Which I also think the level of my classes might also have an effect on why I’m not exactly making friends. I think because the people in my classes are 3 years older than me on average, I’m not seen as someone to hang out with. I think this because a lot of them like to go out to the bars and clubs that are just off campus, and since I can’t legally do that, I would not exactly be the best choice of friendship simply because I can’t participate in the things they typically do with their other friends on Friday nights, which I completely understand.
I think it would also help to mention my living situation to give a complete description of my circumstances. I do live on campus in a dorm, and with the way my school organizes the living situation, I live in a dorm with people in the general school my major falls under. I live in a suite with two other people and I don’t really talk to them. We didn’t know each other in the beginning and had no clue what each other’s interests were and oddly enough they just seemed to keep me out of their plans. (They would invite my roommate to things, and at one point when talking to my roommate while they were preparing to go out, my suitemate who planned the outing made the excuse (Actually quote coming) that “We had eight people going and with you it would’ve been nine so we didn’t invite you” And my roommate didn’t actually talk to me either. I would say good morning and get no response and just ask about class and get little to nothing out of it. She ended up dropping out so I’m assuming the lack of conversation was because she just didn’t want to be there anyway, since she vocalized that before, to the suitemate.) Which hey it’s fine, I don’t need to be friends with my suitemates, but my point in bringing this up is, I don’t even have that to fall back on in case I just want to go grab lunch or something with someone.
I think in general there are some things that I could improve on, which I’m writing this post to hopefully hear what others think, but also wonder if maybe it’s partly the school. With a majority of people being from the state (it’s a figure that’s between 73-80%), most people are not branching out to really make new friends since their group from high school is still together.
I appreciate anyone that takes the time to read this and offer advice and hopefully this will help other students with this issue.