Biggest regret in uni

That's not at all what I meant.

It had nothing to do with me being myself, just once people have already made friends and have secure friendship group they are less inclined to reach out and be as inviting to new people as they would have been in the first week or 2 of uni because they were still trying to make friends then.

It had nothing to do with cliques don't put words in my mouth.

Friendship is a two way thing. If the new person seeking to be friends is doing all the running there would most likely be a uneven distribution of respect in the first place. Not a good way to start, especially for female friendship groups for girls. With a male though, very easy to play the university social system, we don't try and cut each other up socially like the girls do (who lets be honest, are still stuck in girls school mentalities with their female counterparts).

...............right, still doesn't explain what you meant by your comment.

Tell me what is it exactly that you didn't understand? Because you just seem compelled to argue rather than listen.

I already expressed the way I interpreted what you said in post 10. You said I misinterpreted what you said but haven't explained what you meant............ so if I've got it wrong then explain what you mean.

I didn't set myself a limited timeframe unlike others. It is not sensible. I looked around me and saw how people interacted, and I made reasoned decisions on who I wanted to associate with based on which friends would benefit me the most.

Call me shallow or whatever, but I don't believe university kids are the most trustworthy of characters in the first place. So I may as well choose the most beneficial people to befriend.


I did very well in university.

Okay look at it this way.

In the first 2 weeks of uni when people are attending lectures everybody is in the same boat, they don't know anybody and they want to make friends so literally everybody says hi to everybody and talks to everybody. Do you understand that part?

Once people have settled in and started to make friends the introductions die down and people just go to lectures with the friends that they have made.

For personal reasons I missed a lot of the first month of uni and so I had not managed to make any friends, so I would go into lectures and people would already be sat down with their friends ready to take notes and what not because they were settled and not actively looking for new friends (NOT that they were dismissing new people, they just weren't actively looking for them).

This in turn made it harder for me to start making friends, I'd say hi to people and they would be nice to me and say hi back and we'd talk about whatever the topic was but because they were already settled they probably weren't thinking about having to make friends or seeing if they could make new friends. This doesn't make the people I spoke to horrible, cliquey or bitchy, they probably just didn't even realise I was actively trying to make friends with them because that stage if the year where everyone introduces themselves and were trying to make friends was already over.

Right. Once people make friends/groups they become wary of newcomers like kids do in school where they might give the new kid a hard time and make it hard for them to make friends.

What you say is true, but that's just what happens. It's the same when you start a new job, people will have made friends. But at that point you just need to make the extra effort to make friends. Maybe start asking people if they want to go out for a drink.

Might seem trivial, but I regret not making good use of my university's Olympic-sized swimming pool. Even though my academic workload increased substantially in years 2 and 3, I wish I'd given myself a little time to go swimming more than twice a year.

In hindsight I possibly shouldn't have tried so hard to get really good marks in first year, even if it did give a solid basis for the rest of the degree.

Why not? (Or is this related to your first point?)