Finding the Right Crowd at University

WRITTEN BY ELLA BRUMM

Starting university for the first time is a daunting experience for most people. Add in zero friends, a sprinkling of an identity crisis, a generous serving of fresh breakup trauma and a move to a new city in the mix, and that makes it a little bit pricklier. This was what my first semester of uni essentially looked like.

I loathed high school with all my heart and rejoiced the day I walked out of those suffocating burnt sienna-brick buildings. I was excited to leave my toxic friends behind and fuck off to a new city to start my university life, however, I failed to anticipate the anxiety of starting fresh.

I found it difficult to connect with people in my last few years of high school, which made me nervous to start all over again at uni. I found myself gravitating back towards old friends and people I never spoke to in high school as an impractical safety net. A small part of me wished the dynamic of friendship making was like kindergarten where it was as easy as plonking yourself down to the nearest kid in the sandpit and declaring “we’re now best friends”. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple as an adult, and for good reason. To connect with others, we need shared experiences and interests. Although it can be assumed this is simple at university, as it’s expected you’ll meet likeminded people in your course, for me personally this has rarely been the case. The turnover and the vast number of students, especially in Law, typically means you’ll rarely see the same person twice in a lecture theatre. It’s different from high school, where you are able to see your friends every day without having to organise anything. This was a big learning curve for me once leaving school. If you want to make and keep your friends, you have to put the effort in to schedule quality time for them, because otherwise, you’ll lose them.

I’ve made and lost many friends since leaving high school. Some ended amicably while others were far from it. Generally, you make friends in a tutorial and become closer over the course of the subject but realise once it’s finished nothing is tying you together anymore. There are no hurt feelings or beratement, it’s just an inevitability. It sucks but you eventually realise that you really didn’t have that much in common besides the subject you were both taking.