Rough start to uni

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

I just wrote a long ass message and it deleted

In short(apologies)

Have you thought about support services? Have you been diagnosed with anxiety? As a short term fix, do you know if the canteen offer takeaway services? Speaking to your family, going for walks and doing activities you enjoy are all amazing ways to help yourself. Its absolutely amazing what you did over your break - you should be so so so proud of that. Everyone is overtly extroverted atm but it'll die down and won't feel as daunting. You don't have to do all the extraverted activities to have a uni life, you can do small things that YOU enjoy eg. music. People care that's shown by the response of this thread and the amount of people who have read it.

Sorry for the rubbish reply, it was better but I spent like 10 mins on it and then someone posted and then it deleted*sigh*

Anyways

All the best

R

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

hello! honestly don't have any advice to offer, just want to say that i absolutely relate to this hugely 😭 i totally get what you mean, and i'm in a similar position. I'm sending you support and hugs, we're going to get through this!!

Hi there. I'm just going into my second year at university, and found my first year pretty difficult too. So you're not alone. Lots of people feel this way. I know you must feel extremely isolated, but when you picture that many people feel lonely together, it can be somewhat comforting.

My first piece of advice would be to have patience with yourself. Remember the saying 'slow and steady wins the race'? Don't feel obligated or pressured into socialising. Check in with yourself regularly each day to see how you feel. If you'd prefer to have a quiet night alone in your room, there's absolutely no problem with that. Self-care is important here, and so you need to make sure you're eating properly.

Not eating will only make things worse. I also skipped many meals as I didn't want to be in the dining hall alone (at first). I soon learned to not care what anyone else thinks. I know it's tough, but try to focus on one thing and one thing only; the reason why you're in the dining hall. Yes, people go to socialise, but your main objective is to eat. So make sure you do. Go on your phone if you have to, so you don't appear as noticeably alone.

I hated the icebreaker events. I was already an outsider as I was a state-schooled northerner surrounded by posh southerners who had been to private school. I don't go clubbing and the dining hall was also a bit of a minefield too, at first. I found my first friends in the dining hall queue. I was terrified, but managed to approach them, introduce myself, and ask to sit with them. They agreed without hesitation. This may seem daunting, but trust me, taking the 'risk' is worth it. With anxiety, you're essentially putting yourself in a cage and locking it, but you're the one holding the key. That's not to say that the way you are feeling is your fault at all - there will be an explanation, whether you know it or not, for why you feel the way you do; a series of experiences, maybe. Signals are being sent to your brain, the amygdala, and you are going into fight, flight, or freeze mode. It sounds like you're almost always in flight mode, and veer towards avoidance. I can relate to this a lot, so again, you're not on your own.

Secondly, don't kick yourself. Your entire post is filled with self-loathing and unnecessary criticism. Stop getting into the mindset that you are forever damaged, weak, or stuck like this forever. You are none of those things. You even said yourself that at one time you started to actually make a bit of progress. This is really positive and something you need to remind yourself of. You are capable. You are worthy.

But just think about it. Even if you had managed to take a few tiny steps out of that cage, no matter how mentally exhausting it was, if something miniscule went wrong, I guarantee you'd just be kicking yourself back into that cage again. It's completely habitual. You become anxious, and then depressed. I constantly found myself in this state. So my point here is to be gentle. I know it's difficult, but even just taking the time to remind yourself of your worth and your good qualities every morning could help.

Here's a thought - if you saw someone standing on their own, surrounded by a few groups of people in conversations, would you think any less of them? Would you think they deserve to feel humiliated?

If your answer was no, then, again, why are you beating yourself up so much? Is it worth it?

If you are feeling anxious, acknowledge any negative thoughts that are contributing to this emotion, and then try your best to let them go. Fighting with them isn't going to help you. It'll just drain you. Mindfulness could help, if you haven't already tried it. I like the app HeadSpace, but there are others.

Baring everything else in mind, it does sound as though you want to fight your anxiety and become less anxious in general. Obviously, as I mentioned before, take your time. But when you feel ready, try to put yourself out there. You don't want to be locking yourself away physically as well as mentally. This will only manifest your thoughts and make them seem even more real.

I would recommend speaking to your psychologist about the social side of things and how much you struggle. Social interaction is unavoidable at university, as you'll know by now, and so you may not have thought much of it when you were at home. You've had a shock. The good part is, you can start to recover from this and get into a routine.

You may feel that you're trapped in a vicious cycle right now, because unfortunately, this is just the product of anxiety. You feel anxious, you struggle socially for it, and then you beat yourself up for it. You can overcome this and learn to manage your life.

While you cannot help feeling socially anxious (I would advise you seek support for this), you can start to work on how you react to this and how you treat yourself as a result. Putting yourself down is only going to make things worse. Try doing a bit of reflection. What advice would you give to a stranger if they were in the same position?

May I ask if you're on any medication, such as antidepressants or beta-blockers? Have you ever tried any of these medications or similar?

I'm just going off my own experiences with mental health and cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as psychological research.

I hope this is of some help.

First of all - tell someone at your university. There will be a counselling service, make sure someone knows that you’re finding things tough.

Secondly - contact your course team/tutor and explain that you missed the welcome lecture (and apologise for the confusion). Ask if they can put you in touch with someone who was there to catch up.

Thirdly - see if your university or SU offer a buddy or mentor scheme and sign up.

Fourthly - your SU and student support team will almost certainly be running some low key events for you to meet people. Things like quizzes, bus trips, arts and craft activities etc or volunteering opportunities (litter picking, tree planting). Sign up for some. Most people at these things will be in a very similar situation to you and will be looking to make new friends - plus having an activity to focus on makes it easier to get chatting to people.

Fifthly - your SU will also have clubs and societies to meet people with similar interests. Have a look on the SU website and see if anything sounds interesting and if it does get in touch with them.

It sounds like you’ve had your confidence knocked out of you. That sucks especially if it’s unexpected but it’s also just temporary. You can get back your confidence (or at least build back enough of a mask to fake it until you have some people you feel comfortable enough around to relax).

I just wrote a long ass message and it deleted

In short(apologies)

Have you thought about support services? Have you been diagnosed with anxiety? As a short term fix, do you know if the canteen offer takeaway services? Speaking to your family, going for walks and doing activities you enjoy are all amazing ways to help yourself. Its absolutely amazing what you did over your break - you should be so so so proud of that. Everyone is overtly extroverted atm but it'll die down and won't feel as daunting. You don't have to do all the extraverted activities to have a uni life, you can do small things that YOU enjoy eg. music. People care that's shown by the response of this thread and the amount of people who have read it.

Sorry for the rubbish reply, it was better but I spent like 10 mins on it and then someone posted and then it deleted*sigh*

Anyways

All the best

R

you must not cling on to these negative thoughts. let them wash away. they are not who you are. enjoy the rest of your life.

I'll try and carry on updating this and maybe run some dilemmas through people here as well when they occur. I think tonight I'm just going to stay in...

Hi guys, I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, although if you do read it and even say something I really appreciate it (and you!). I just wanted to write something (more like 1845 words of ramble, and I’ve missed so much stuff I wanted to post) to vent and post it somewhere and even if it is just an annoyance in this forum, I hope writing all of this down will help me.

Basically, I’ve just moved into uni and I’m already finding it horrible. I’m finding it so intimidating and impossible to make friends or start talking to anyone, and I feel so crushed by my shyness to the point that I can’t bring myself to leave my room, I am starving myself and I worry that my academics are going to be the next thing to take the hit. It wasn’t meant to be this way – I thought I had gotten over how cripplingly difficult I can find social situations and was quite confident and excited for uni, so this experience has been such a shock.

Brief history, I have always been a pretty shy kid, at primary school I always thought of myself as a pretty unpopular kid with few friends (which I think in hindsight was pretty unfair), same at secondary school (this time it was quite fair). At secondary school I had a few close friends who I would sometimes hang out with during break and even very occasionally see outside school, but I largely had no social life at secondary school. Then, just as I was starting to build a friend group at my secondary school, I got kicked out at the end of year 11 for academic reasons and had to move schools for sixth form.

The new school I joined had a very small intake for the sixth form. I was dumped straight into the deep end, the school did almost nothing to help integrate me into the school and I was socially inexperienced. Needless to say these 2 years of sixth form were some of the most unpleasant and depressing years of my life. I struggled to make any individual friends and was not even close to making any inroads into any friend groups.

Very few things make me more anxious then being visibly alone surrounded by groups of people socialising, it’s so incredibly humiliating. Therefore, during the lunch break I would skip going to the lunch hall, lock myself up in the library and hide. There is an assumption that most people who are introverted or struggle to make friends are quite satisfied being alone but this is not really true for me. I want to be sociable and have friends, I want to go out and do stuff, and I want to enjoy being a teenager. I can enjoy time by alone but only in limited doses and only when I choose to be alone, not when it is forced upon me (or perhaps I should say I am incapable of finding people to be with).

And just as I felt like I was making some progress socially and getting to know a few people at my new school, COVID hit, and we were all sent home for 3 months. Any remaining chance of me living the sociable sixth form dream was lost, and I largely spent the next year and a half lonely, depressed and dejected.

The one advantage of my new school is that I did brilliantly academically (this was all that kept me going during those 2 painful years) and I got into a pretty decent university, albeit not the one I was originally aiming to get into. However, at the eleventh hour I decided to take a gap year and go on a programme where I would live abroad. My aim was to try and recoup the lost years of life I had suffered due to COVID and my difficult school life.

I did find the start of programme very difficult and I felt out of my depth in such a social environment. I was often very stressed and anxious and it wasn’t smooth because I was still very awkward at the time but I fairly quickly developed a small friend group out of a few of my roommates and some other people on the programme. A lot of aspects of the programme helped me make friends. To name a few things: I had roommates who were people I could instantly just turn to and be friends basically by default; it was a small programme and we did lots of activities together giving us opportunities to meet each other; also we had to quarantine as a flat for 7 days at the start which was actually great for me because I had lots of time to settle in and get to know my flat before everything got overwhelming.

When a few new people arrived halfway through the year I instantly had the confidence to befriend them and they became some of my closest friends on my gap year. I even developed a huge (probably unreciprocated and definitely unrealised) crush on one of them. By the end of my gap year I was quite burnt out and frustrated – having feelings for someone you are very close with but not having the confidence to tell them is not particularly pleasant but at the time I did try and put it in perspective and say that was much better than feeling completely socially isolated.

Indeed, I slightly beat myself up mentally about the fact that I sacrificed other friendship opportunities to follow around one girl who was probably never going to date me and would be returning to the opposite side of the world in 2 months anyway. Now THAT kind of regret would have been a complete pipe dream to Sixth Form me.

Anyway, the gap year wasn’t easy, but it was a valuable experience, I returned to the UK feeling like a much-improved person who was finally competent and confident socially. I spent most of this past summer sitting inside complaining of perpetual boredom and my complete lack of social life back home. However, I eagerly awaited going to university with a bit of confidence that having lived abroad for a year I would find settling into uni fairly painless and have a great time.

Unlike my gap year and joining my sixth form school I didn’t even bother to discuss with family, friends, my psychologist etc. any concerns I have regarding making friends because I was genuinely quite confident that I would just settle in. Therefore, what has happened in the past few days has been a complete shock to the system.

I did start to get a bit of lingering anxiety when I went to see a friend from my gap year who had just moved into a uni in the city I live in. Just seeing these huge crowds of freshers walking around knowing that they have just moved in and met each other made me feel a bit nervous, but nothing major.

When I moved in, and it took little more than 10 minutes for my excitement to be replaced by crippling anxiety. I have a single room and it is not part of a flat – it is just in a long corridor and therefore I don’t have roommates I can just fall into and find my way around the university together with. Most of the day is just free time. Everyone is already in groups talking to each other and exploring but I have literally got to know no one. I am now scared to even leave my room because of the humiliation of just being alone and having no-one to talk to.

There are a few events on but they mostly suck for actually socialising and making friends with people (clubbing and formal dinners are fun if you are going with friends but horrible to be at alone). I just can’t face going to them because they are so oppressive to go to and not have anyone to talk to. I have tried approaching people just in the corridors or talking to people in queues or sitting next to people in the talk we had and striking up conversation. They have been mostly friendly but brief – after my gap year I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation but the people I have spoken to always seem to have somewhere else to go and I feel no closer to having any people I can talk to at events or go around with.

Perhaps worst of all, my accommodation is catered but I am too scared to go and sit alone at the dining hall, so I have resorted to just not eating. This is also what I used to do at school and it is horrible because I am a huge eater and have a reputation for having a huge appetite. I don’t have an eating disorder and I want to eat but I just can’t get myself to go to the dining hall and do it. As I write this I feel pretty queasy from hunger and am struggling to even concentrate on writing this. This morning I spent 2 hours trying to get myself out of room paralysis and persuading myself to go and eat, and eventually I left my room but seeing the huge crowds instantly made me cripplingly scared and I basically ran back to the safety of my room. That is what prompted me to write this.

You see, on the first day I arrived and freaked out pretty much instantly, but I was determined to sleep on it, wake up and try to have a better second day. The second day has not really seen any improvement. But my ego is far to big for me to turn around to friends and family and say ‘this sucks and I’m doing terribly’ after hyping up my own time at uni so much, particularly at such an early stage (literally a few days into freshers). That’s why I’m anonymously venting to TSR instead.

I’m still really hoping that my fortunes will turn and within a few days this thesis will turn out to be incredibly embarrassing. But I worry I can only have so many more days of hope before I fall into a cycle of perpetual depression and I lose motivation to attempt to fix my problem. I don’t want to become so scared to leave my room that I can’t even drag myself to lectures.

So yeah, that’s my situation summed up not very briefly. I won’t bother thanking anyone who has read this far because no-one has. I am just so shocked to be in this situation, I haven’t felt like this in over a year and I thought I was done with these kinds of issues. But just writing this has helped me immensely and I hope I will look back at this in the future as something pointless and negative when I am settled in and happy at uni.

Anyway I am going to lie down and cry…

Hi there,

I am so sorry to hear that you are finding university difficult. This happens to us all though so please don't worry, lots of people find it really hard to integrate into university with loads of people who you don't know and in a new city. Especially during freshers, I think that alot of people think that they are going to have the perfect university experience, find their best friend for life in the first 5 minutes and never look back, but in reality, that doesn't happen. I for one, met my closest friends in my second year of university, some friends I made in the first year but my actual friendship group was not established until my second year

As for advice:
- I saw your other post saying you missed a welcome talk, don't worry about that, you wouldn't have really been able to meet many people in that anyway as it would have been the lecturers talking about the course and answering questions
- In terms of making friends, please join a society which interests you, whether its a sports one or a more fun one like medieval society or something, you will find people from all different courses in societies, it may be that your circle of friends are not in your course.
- You can also utilise your university wellbeing services and your personal tutor to help you through this difficult time, you may find that they have resources you can use.

I hope this helps
Ellen
Digital Ambassador
University of Sunderland