How To Make New Friends Online?

How to make new friends at uni?

• In the past few years I have come a LONG way from being in a high school with people I could not stand and really struggling to fit in. After school finished two years I moved to a different city and lived in a college type place and made a few good close friends. It was so nice to be away from home, having fun with new people who became close very fast. It was also great because I got to meet people from all walks of life, and even became best friends with a girl on exchange. Now two years later that chapter has run its course and I have moved back home to start a new degree. While I've been away for two years I have drifted away from a few close friends here back home and the people I consider my best friends in this life are the people I only met a few years ago. Now that I'm back home I feel like I definitely have a fresh start and outlook on life from the terrible high school years where everything felt hopeless. At that time although I said I wanted to meet new people, the truth is I had very low self esteem and other things to work out and I really could not move forward here. Now I've pretty much worked through all that and I genuinely want to be out there showing the world who I really am. So now the only problem for me is actually making new friends back home. Everyone here back home all seem to still be hanging out mainly with people from high school, not a lot has changed. I'm starting uni on monday so I feel like that is my only chance to meet a great group of friends. But what I've noticed is that in a lot of degrees, people only seem to have one or two friends? but in others they become a big group of friends from uni and move on from high school people? I just hope out of the 150 people in my degree, I will be able to make a group of friends. Otherwise things are going to be quite difficult socially because the close friends I do have here all hang out with their own groups because I moved to a different school and quite frankly I don't want to be the girl who seems to only get invited with them as a 'privilege'. That's what it feels like sometimes. In saying this though, it seems there are a few people who don't hang around high school people anymore and seem to have new friends, but how do you make it clear to people that you're actually looking to make completely new friends? not just acquaintances at uni? All I ever wanted was a close knit group of friends but the two high schools I went have disadvantaged me in that area. Any advice/thoughts?

• Answer:

  In highschool I had a close knit group of friends, but although I loved seeing the people I loved everyday, I was never very proactive and didn't really see people out of school often. When I started uni, I made a friend in each class, but they remained 'uni' friends, ie: I don't go out with them in my free time. I have exactly three friends at uni (I go back on Monday too for my third year). Everyone is different. Some people long for constant social contact and activity, they want to be a part of something. Myself, I'm quite solitary and only like maintaining relationships with people extremely close to me. In class you will make friends - no one likes to spend their days in silence, you will definately get to know the people in your tutorials and since you're doing the same subject you might have similar interests. Whether or not you creat a group of lasting friends depends on how much time you spend with other students, and also you have to make an effort: if you make no attemps to see the person outside of class, you'll just be friends in class. At uni, after a class you can always ask "do you have a class to go to - wanna grab some lunch/ a coffee?" Your highschool experience will quickly fade into the past, you don't have to see any people from highschool ever again. Start anew, hold onto your dearest friends but find new ones. All the best.