What if I don't make friends during Freshers' Week?

If you don't make friends during Freshers' Week, you haven't missed your chance.

Freshers' Week is good for meeting lots of people, but meeting people and actually becoming friends with them are different things. Your course, accommodation, societies, sports, jobs and everyday university life will keep putting new people in front of you long after the first week is over.

Instead of worrying about whether you've found your friendship group yet, focus on something smaller:

Who would you like to see again?

Then make that happen.

Freshers' Week isn't a deadline for making friends

University can create the impression that everyone forms a friendship group immediately.

You've been there five days and suddenly the people in the flat next door appear inseparable.

That doesn't mean those groups are fixed.

People keep meeting coursemates once teaching starts. Societies begin holding regular activities. You meet friends of flatmates, people from other halls and people you happened to sit beside in a seminar.

Your social life at university is still forming.

Don't just try to meet more people

If Freshers' Week didn't go brilliantly, the instinct can be to meet as many new people as possible.

Sometimes the better next step is to go back to the people you've already met.

Think about the person you chatted to before a lecture. The flatmate you had a good conversation with in the kitchen. Someone you met at a society. The person you spoke to for twenty minutes at a Freshers' event and haven't seen since.

You don't need to know whether they're going to become a close friend.

Just create another opportunity to spend time together.

Ask if they want to grab coffee after class. Suggest getting lunch before a lecture. See if they fancy going to the next society event together.

Small plans are much easier than trying to manufacture an instant friendship group.

Seeing someone again matters more than having a perfect first meeting

A lot of Freshers' Week is introductions.

What's your name? Where are you from? What are you studying? Which halls are you in?

You can have that conversation twenty times without becoming close to anyone.

Friendships have more chance to develop when you actually keep spending time together.

That's why your course and societies can be useful beyond simply helping you meet people. They give you repeated opportunities to see some of the same faces.

Then you can take the next step yourself and make a plan outside whatever originally brought you together.

A plan doesn't need to start with a friendship group

This is something Loopt is particularly useful for.

Maybe you've met one person on your course and quite like them. You don't need to wait until you've somehow assembled six friends before doing anything.

Put up a plan for coffee, a pub trip, a walk, lunch or whatever you're already thinking of doing and add them.

You can include other people you've met too. And where you've opened the plan up to it, people can add people they know.

So a plan that starts with two people can become three or four. Someone brings their flatmate. Someone else adds a person from their course.

You don't need to know everyone at the beginning for the group to start taking shape.

Don't assume everyone else has already found their people

Once you're feeling behind socially, it's very easy to interpret everyone else as settled.

But the person you met in your seminar might also be wondering who to have lunch with.

Someone going to a society alone might be hoping they'll recognise a familiar face.

Making a small plan isn't a declaration that you want to be best friends. You're just giving someone another opportunity to spend time together.

And if one person isn't interested or doesn't make it, try someone else.

You're looking for the people where spending time together starts to feel easy.

Give it longer than a week

Freshers' Week can help you meet people. It doesn't decide who your university friends will be.

Keep going to the places where you naturally see the same people. Talk to your coursemates. Actually turn up to the societies you signed up for. Spend some time in the shared spaces where you live.

But don't stop at meeting them.

If you like someone, make another plan.

Then another.

Your university friendship group doesn't have to appear fully formed during Freshers' Week. It can grow one plan and one person at a time.