University is full of thousands of students, all with different backpack grounds, interests, and aims in life. As much as as the grades are important, making friends, meeting people and having a healthy social life is too.
When you finally arrive on campus for the first time your first thought it: “Great! I can’t wait to start uni and make loads of friends!”, the second is “Oh no…I have to start uni and try and make loads of new friends.”
In the drunken chaos that is freshers week, we all struggle to find friendship amidst the masses of people, loud music and copious amounts of booze! We often find ourselves clinging to unlikliest of people. It just can’t be helped sometimes. You might already be in with a crowd you are a little uncertain about, but don’t panic!
Now that freshers week is out the way, and term has officially started, its time to take a deep breath and start looking for some more chums.
Here’s some advice with 12 simple ideas on how to meet like-minded people and potentially lifelong friends.
1. Be Confident
By actions speaking louder that than words, we mean body language which can often say a lot about a person before they’ve begun speaking. You’ve been thrown in at the deep end; you’re miles away from family and friends which, indeed, makes for an extremely stressful situation.
However, when you meet your new flatmates, colleagues or other potential new friends, you need to stay calm and relaxed. Or at least appear so – there are many signals our body gives to people that people could get the wrong idea about
One way, to ensure you radiate an air of calm and magnetism, and that people don’t get the wrong idea about you, is by maintaining positive body language: stand up straight, pull your shoulders back, keep your hands relaxed and comfortably down by your sides – not in a fist as this can be read as latent aggression and not folded as this can send signals of, ‘leave me alone’ or ‘I’ve got something to hide’, as does maintaining poor eye contact.
If you have caught someone’s attention, confidently maintain eye contact and warmly smile – no need to lay on the cheese, that just looks creepy. What you are trying to do is appear open and welcoming.
Act confidently and enjoy yourself…This one’s quite simple really, if you look like you are having fun and act confidently people will want to be around you – then you really become a people magnet.
2. Be Open and Approachable
Meaning, you what to be as welcoming to new people and be open to new things, for instance, ever thought about leaving your door wedged open? This applies only if you’ve just moved into student halls, otherwise it is a silly idea, as you’re bound to get robbed.
Nethertheless, when you’re moving into halls, you want people to know you have arrived and want to make their acquaintance; put on some music and wedge your door open -people are naturally curious and want to meet their new flatmate. As with positive body language, leaving your door open says you are open to meet new people. And the music is like nectar to a bee.
Try to step out of your comfort zone a little – for example, not really into clubbing but you’ve been invited? Go, you never know you might enjoy it more this time and you’ll meet new people. Similarly, try to accept every invitation and offer which comes your way, as long as it doesn’t affect your studies. This will help you connect with more people and allow you to discover what you like and are looking for in a friend , university is all about change so you never really know.
Don’t spend too much time alone; withdrawing isn’t going to win you any friends. If it’s dinner time eat it in communal areas rather than alone in your room, even more, offer to cook for your flatmates – that should win ‘em over.
3. Talk Till You’re Blue in the Face
Perfect the art of conversation, all it takes are a few simple tricks; firstly, you need to keep your body language open and relaxed, coupled with a nice smile (not a toothy gape, mind) acts like a tractor beam to you.
Next, you’ve grabbed someone’s attention either by approaching someone or them approaching you, start the conversation with small talk and quickly find some common ground (example) – this should be easy since you’re both students.
Remember to ask their name and keep repeating it, people love to hear their own name- it sounds a bit egotistical but it’s reassuring and gives them the impression you are paying attention to them. When they speak, listen; retain positive body language, eye contact and repeat phrases back to them.
Another great tactic is to compliment the person you are speaking to but only if you genuinely mean it – people will tell if you are being insincere.
4. Flatmates
We have to be honest, its a complete lottery whether you get on with your flatmates. Half the people I know loved their flatmates and ended up being great friends with them, went out partying every night with them, stayed up late playing ring of fire, all of it.
The other half used to hide shivering in their rooms from the people in their halls. Its hard to trade the idyllic image of dorm life (constant hanging out with flatmates in your flats – suddenly becoming instant friends with everyone in your dorm and having massive kitchen parties!) with the all-too-frequent and very tempting prospect of deliberately hiding in your room until the kitchen is empty, just so you don’t have to endure an uncomfortable silence with the shy girl from three doors down.
But hey, even if you don’t mesh with your neighbours, it isn’t all bad. Although you may never be best mates with your neighbours you can, however, establish a working flatmate relationship.
Small talk will eventually flourish if you work at it, and soon you will have something to chat about from day to day so that you don’t have to peek through the little window in the kitchen door to see if anyone’s in there before hastily ducking down and scampering back to your room ever again.
Another thing that helps to break the ice is having a dinner party. One of my flatmates from the first year had this, very good, idea and cooked us some lovely Greek food. We all came (as no self-respecting student says no to free food) and soon we were all chatting and laughing together for the first time in nearly six weeks since we all moved in! So give it a go. Make a move and make a casual acquaintance with each of your flatmates if not a life-long friendship!
5. Join a Club/Society
Perhaps the best place of all to find friends is always available – societies! There are usually an inexhaustible supply of these at any given uni so take the plunge and find those best friends.
Joining a specific club or society will put you into direct contact with people who share an interest or hobby that you have. Be it an interest in football, religion or anything in between, there’s bound to be a group of people who have that interest too.
Or, if there’s not currently a club for that particular niche, why not create one? Get yourself down to your Freshers’ fair and get meeting people! You may have to go to a few before you find your favourite crowd, but it will happen.
And even if you think that none of the societies are for you, why not set one up yourself! Those ‘best friend and boyfriend’ people I told you about, they decided to do just that. We all set up a society together and ended up with tonnes of friends. We’re still going after two years and so we get new friends every year joining the society, we’re never short of them. So go ahead, be brave and go out into the world of uni friends!
6. Find a Hobby or Learn a New Skill
If you’re not keen on the idea of joining a club, then just carry on doing your hobbies, and you’re bound to find people who share similar ideals.
If you like art, then get down to a local gallery. If you’re a sports fan, get to a game. You’ll be surrounded by people who will be more the merrier to see others with the same interest.
University is also a great time to experiment and to step out of your comfort zone – so it’s an ideal time to try and learn something new.
Why not take up something totally different, like street dancing? Or even something that could boost your career prospects and employability in the long-run, like a foreign language?
7. Get a Part-time Job
There are so many part time jobs for students, and a lot offer the chance to meet new people. For example working in a cafe, restaurant, bar or club you will have other colleagues and mixing with people on a daily basis which is a great way to form close bonds.
8. Join a Gym
The university gym will be full of students, and is a great place to meet people. Also, in getting out of the house, booking classes you can not only potentially make new friends, but you’ll be just that bit healthier too!
9. Go to Lectures
Attending classes early on in your term is one of the easiest and most effective way to meet people. These are the students you’ll be spending your next few years amongst. You share an interest (your course), and the likelihood is that you share similar goals in the future.
Usually, as you would expect, you will find friends on your course. But even if you don’t luck out there, don’t worry.
10. Get Involved with Discussions
If there is a debate going on at your campus and it interests you, get involved – the people there clearly share an interest in the topic, and whilst you may not agree in the short-term there’s a good chance of forging a strong friendship as a result. You’ll also be able to impress your teachers.
Online discussions can lead you to like-minded people too, just because a discussion begins behind a screen, doesn’t mean it’ll end there.
11. Be Social
Here’s the big one. Just talk to people – it sounds cliché, but you can’t judge a book by its cover, so you never know whether you and the stranger in the street are 100% compatible.
What’s the worst that can happen? The stranger scurries away and you’ve not lost a thing?
There’s no such thing as a stranger, just a friend you’ve not met.
12. Don’t Feel Guilty!
It is universally understood that it is entirely possible to spend the majority of the second term of uni trying to get rid of the friends you made in the first one. Its harsh, but its true.
I know it feels cruel to leave your initial uni friends, (even if they drive you up the wall!) and start expanding your friendship pool. And even if you still keep in touch with them while making new friends, its hard not to feel like your ditching them. But don’t worry.
If you feel like you don’t get on, then the chances are they probably feel that way too, and they want to find some other mates as well. You just need to let all of you go your separate ways.
Most of the time this happens naturally anyway without you needing to do anything drastic. And if you live in the same halls or do the same course, then you can still keep in touch and break free without any awkwardness!
Uni Really is a Great Way to Make New Friends
There you have it, making friends is as easy as 1 2 3 and despite what you’ve possible heard, don’t be discouraged about how difficult it is to make university friends. It really ISN’T just about making small talk with people you end up saddled with out of chance.
University really is one the BEST place to make life-long friends, you just have to make more of an effort to find them than you might initially think. Usually you won’t have too far to look, you just may have to look a little further than your halls.