Meeting people in your first term at university

The first weeks of university can feel as if everyone else has already found their people. They haven't. Most of the confident groups you see in week one met a few days earlier and are hoping it works out.

Friendships at university, like anywhere, mostly grow from seeing the same people again and again, somewhere it's easy to talk. You can't schedule chemistry. You can arrange the repetition.

Be somewhere regularly

The most useful habit is becoming a familiar face somewhere. The same seat in the same lecture, the same library floor, the same café between classes, the same weekly society session. Familiarity makes the second conversation easy, and the second conversation is where most friendships start.

• Pick one or two societies and go three or four times before deciding, rather than trying ten once each. The first session is everyone's awkward one.
• Choose at least one that has nothing to do with your course: a choir, a running club, a volunteering group, a cooking society.
• Look for things with a task built in, like a rehearsal, a match, or a shift at a food bank. Doing something side by side is easier than talking face to face with nothing to do.
• Eat in shared spaces sometimes, even when taking food back to your room is easier.

Say yes to coffee

When someone suggests coffee, food after a seminar, or walking to the next lecture together, say yes more often than feels natural. Those small, unplanned moments are where acquaintances turn into people you know.

Be the one who asks, too. Most people are relieved to be asked, and a specific, low-stakes invitation is easy to accept and easy to turn down:

I'm getting a coffee before the 2pm lecture. Want to come?

"We should hang out sometime" rarely becomes anything. A time and a place usually does. And if someone says no, it's almost always about their timetable, not about you. Ask again another week, or ask someone else.

Mix beyond your course

Your course gives you a ready-made group, and it's a good one. It's also a group with the same deadlines, the same pressures, and often the same view of things. Some of the most useful and surprising friendships come from somewhere else: a second-year who knows which modules are worth taking, a PhD student in another department, someone from the other side of the world who lives down your corridor.

• Talk to the people in your shared kitchen or corridor, including the ones studying something you know nothing about.
• Go to an event in another department now and then. A public lecture or a seminar with free food both count.
• Say hello to the people who run the places you use: the library, the café, your department office. They know how everything works.
• If you've moved from another country, mix both ways. Friends from home are a comfort, and friends from here are a door.

It's normal for this to take a while

One study of how friendships form found that it took around fifty hours together for acquaintances to become casual friends, and many more for close ones. Fifty hours is weeks of lectures, lunches, and society evenings. If you're five weeks in and don't have a close group yet, nothing has gone wrong. You're on the way.

Lots of people feel lonely in their first term, including people who look completely settled. It isn't a sign that you chose the wrong place, or that something is wrong with you. For most people it eases as the repetition builds.

If it isn't easing, or it feels heavier than ordinary homesickness, your university's student support or wellbeing team is there for exactly this. Talking to them is a sensible thing to do, never a failure.

A few small habits for the term

• Learn and use two new names a week.
• Go back to the same society or club at least three times.
• Say yes to one invitation a week that you'd normally skip.
• Ask one person a week for a coffee, a walk, or lunch.
• Sit next to someone new in one class.
• Follow up once after a good conversation: "That was fun. Same time next week?"

None of these needs to go well every time. They only need to keep happening.

If you're new staff or a researcher

Starting at a university as a member of staff, a postdoc, or a PhD student has its own kind of loneliness. You may be the only new person in your group, and most welcome events are aimed at undergraduates. The same habits apply. Go to the department coffee or seminar every week, even when your work feels more urgent. Ask the department administrator who you should meet. Invite one person from a neighbouring lab or office for coffee each week. Researchers who know people beyond their own group tend to hear about more, and often find help faster when they're stuck.

Meeting people across your university

Large universities make it easy to meet hundreds of people once and hard to see anyone twice. One-to-one coffees help with that. You can find your university and join the students and staff there using your university email address, then meet people one introduction at a time, each with a reason to say hello. Joining is your choice, and it never replaces the society or the shared kitchen. It adds a few more people worth saying yes to.