Have you ever walked on Speedway (the main pedestrian walkway at UT Austin) feeling as if you are following a swarm of people? You may recognize a few faces here or there, but the real joy is when you spot a friend or an acquaintance, and your face breaks into a smile. You wave and keep walking with the swarm, or you stop to say hi. But the real question one can ask is, how can I find myself in a crowd so big?
This symbolically represents a drawback of large campuses like UT Austin. With a student body of 42,444 undergraduate students (Fall 2023), it can often be hard to find friends and people to connect with. I remember that during my first week at UT, I talked to probably over 30 students and attended too many events and info sessions to count, but keeping in touch and actually meeting up was hard. It required mutual effort, and with often conflicting schedules, I had to reach out and plan to really stay in touch to grow our friendships. However, getting lunch with someone I met and going somewhere in the city helped me get to know them better.
Finding friends, even in organizations, can be tough just because of the sheer number of people in them. While there may be an effort to create smaller groups through teams or families, it can still feel as if at every event you are with a whole new group of people. It is also true that people can be cliquey, and many students will stick with those they know from their high school and hometown. For those who commute, this becomes even more difficult due to less time on campus and perhaps being away on the weekend, leading to more difficulty in maintaining ties.
It can be hard to walk up to people and say hi. It can be hard to walk into a room of strangers, hoping that you walk out with a connection, and yet you do it anyway because you have hope and convince yourself that you have the confidence, too. It can be hard to feel heard.
There is also often a stigma that being in such a large school means you are expected to meet many people, make friends, put in that extra effort, and find your community because there are just so many new people to meet. This may even cause others to see not having friends as a result of the person’s lack of effort. In truth, we are all different, with varying interests, backgrounds, and personalities, and it takes a lot to build and maintain those relationships, especially at such a large campus. There are some features embedded in our daily activities that don’t help either, such as the large lecture halls with seating arrangements that aren’t as inviting to collaboration, or organizations that have so many students that they start to feel as if one is in a lecture hall, or the physical distance between students’ living arrangements.
Although a large campus size may mean it is harder to find friends, it does offer many advantages. The vast number of resources, organizations, classes, minors, and programs speaks to the prestige and opportunities offered by the university. That also means that students get access to major events, whether it is the concerts at the Moody Center, the UT Marketplace, or the Stanley Studio H2O College Tour coming soon, lol. These resources are helpful and great opportunities to utilize, but it can also be important to find your interests, people you can hang out with, and communities where you feel accepted and appreciated.
That being said, if you are feeling a bit lonely or having a difficult time making friends, there are resources to help. SHARE communities offer peer support and activities based on various interests and backgrounds. Joining an organization that has a smaller number of people and encourages participation, or in which you have a leadership position, can allow you to have a greater voice and make meaningful connections. You can try going to the gym, finding study buddies, attending campus events, or volunteering. You can do your part by saying hello to those sitting next to you in class and getting to know them, sitting with someone new in the dining hall, and making a deliberate effort to stay in touch with people you meet. Let’s do our part to increase inclusion and make our campus a place of belonging—a place where, rather than feeling like people are following the swarm, they feel included, as if linked to it.