Did anyone else feel that college was lonely?

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I feel lonely in college a lot. I get told that college students aren't judgemental, but I feel that they often are. I'm very isolated. I'm going through a hard time and it feels like no one is there for me.

Sometimes they are judgmental...and sometimes they are not judgmental.

I'm sorry you are feeling lonely.

Do you get along with your family?

Are you going to a college a long way from home?

I deliberately avoided most social contact in college, except when I had enough free time to attend meetings of a role-playing gamers' club. Imagine finishing off a six-page assignment on Celtic druids before the Roman conquests, and then stepping into an AD&D game as a 12th-level druid character...

I felt this way a lot in my first year. However, things have changed since then. When I started my second year I experienced an unexpected spike in popularity. I found it to be quite strange. During our first year it took a while for my class to open up and communicate with each other. Then, at the beginning of my second year certain distant friends suddenly started having conversations more frequently with me. It felt as though the entire class was somehow a lot closer than before the summer break.

Then I had to join a group project. It went well for the most part, and I made a few more friends as a result. Personally, I wanted to put a bit more effort into building a social life since loneliness had taken a toll on me mentally in the first year.

On a few occasions at the start of my second year I even went to events I had little knowledge about to experience something new and to meet people (such as a drag show). I didn't understand the references, I copied the rest of the crowd's reaction, and felt rather out of place during the event. However, I did meet other students through this. Apparently it is sometimes customary to throw or spill things at/on the front row in drag shows, which is also common in pantomimes. So I learnt something from the experience at least.

A significant part of my friends I have met from another friend introducing them. Even friends of friends introducing their friends etc. Six degrees of separation and all that.

In my first year I stuck mainly to only hanging out with a few people I already knew. Admittedly I thought that I'd left it too late to establish myself since people already had their social groups. However, this turned out not to be true. Due to my initial shy behaviour it took longer, but new people did approach me and I became friends with some of them. Sometimes using a bit of humour helped.

My old flatmates in my first year definitely contributed to my loneliness. They'd throw parties in our communal kitchen and get annoyed if I showed up. Despite the space being communal. So I'd hear them partying and I'd feel left out. I'd see students in another building playing cards and it would make me sad since it made me acutely aware that I lacked a group. This made me wish I had a sense of belonging. I used to get homesick a lot. Admittedly I still do sometimes, but less frequently. I still care about my family, but I have gotten more used to living independently.

Nowadays I feel as though I belong. I am more familiar with my classmates. Back in my first year I used to sit with another classmate before lesson if I arrived early. I still do, but now there's three other people who bring over a chair and sit with us when they arrive. My friend is much shyer than me. I wouldn't call myself outgoing, but my friend makes me look that way in comparison. When my other classmates sit with us I pick up on my friend's apparent discomfort.

Another reason I felt lonely in my first year was that a different close friend of mine started hanging out with a bad crowd. They changed in ways that made them seem like another person. We became more distant. I was baffled at their choice in friends and wondered if I even knew them anymore. At this point we still are friends but not as close. I think that gradually fading away from them is my best option.

Hopefully things will improve for you. Feel free to send me a PM if you'd like to. Even if it's just to vent.

I was horrendously lonely when I went away to University. I was assaulted my first week there. Three months later I was the last young woman on my floor in the dormitory before Christmas. Everyone had gone home and I had a very late exam on the last possible day. There were many days I thought I wouldn't survive because I wanted to be home in my safe space. I wasn't diagnosed autistic at this time and I had no accommodations or counsellors. It was a really tough time but I managed to make a couple of friends through student housing. I still talk to one of them on Facebook (it's been 30 years since I've seen her).

Please write or PM whenever you need a friend.

College was lonely. Often surrounded by precious lil "people" , but left out.

Living in a dorm.

Some college students are judgmental, sometimes, in different amounts

Just like everyone else

Even if nobody was judgmental you could still be lonely

Didn't know where I got in

Still don't

36

Might not fit in anywhere

Don't like anything. Not good at anything. Don't like anyone. (Several exceptions). Nobody likes me

But whatever

"Life" goes on and on and on and on and on about nothing

I never lived in a dorm. I am quite certain I could not have survived all the lack of privacy and noise and so on. I was a single mother, going to school full time and working, so I did not have much time for socializing. That was back when single mothers were unusual.

Social contact avoided me in college. Every time I went to join a club or organization, it was run by couples - and this was not a religious college.

May be you schould care about your mood when you look towards others. NTs sense your mood and think you are that way just because of them. This can be a problem once you are disappointed, frustrated or emotionless.

Yes, college was very lonely for me. I just never fit in with others since I was young, so I spent most of my time on either my studies or my hobbies. Most of my classmates spent their spare time being drunk/high, but that was not an option for me (allergic to alcohol and I don’t use drugs). Sometimes I would go for a long walk around town on a weekend night just to observe what I was missing out on. In reality, it was not much even though it felt like it was. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

Whale_Tuune, you should see if your university has some sort of disability advocacy group and join that. If your university doesn't have one, do what I did and start one yourself! You university's disability accommodation office may be able to send an anonymous email to registered students to help gather interest, and may already know other students who are interested in starting such an organization.

I was somewhat lonely during my first two years of college. I co-founded my university's disability advocacy organization toward the end of my sophomore year, and was a lot less lonely during my junior and senior year because of that. I never lived in the dorms.

First-year college (in the sense of tertiary education, not secondary colleges) can have a lot of judgmental people. They've just been effectively told that they're smart enough, worthy enough, to be accepted for higher education, and tend to have an ego boost because of that. Plus the new environment often makes younger students more wary, anxious, and ego-puffing as they try and jockey for social status, and that can lead to more unthinking, sharper interactions.

By the second year, a lot of that has been knocked out of them, and many people have failed out as they're simply not able to adjust to the new environment fast enough, or have had other issues in their personal (and usually now adult) life which have crept up on them. Add that to a harsher workload in the second year, and more familiarity with the college environment, and in general there's something of a mellowing out when it comes to interaction with others.

If you're finding that first-year is lonely and hard to connect to people in, I give the same advice I give to students in other levels of education: look for connections outside your school and (in college) outside your grade level. You're not limited to social connections with only people your own age (or who are doing the same courses).

Haha, unfortunately, I'm a Junior, so I don't know about waiting for everyone to mature.

I think there must be something wrong with how I approach people. I don't know tbh.

I was in the same boat, plus I was older than most of the other students.

Same, very lonely I was only in college for about two years started when I was 18 have my associates degree. Made no friends in those 2 years I'm in my 20s and I still have no friends I'm an outcast whenever I go I can only blame myself. So Yes I understand how you feel.

I definitely felt lonely in college. I spent 10 years in post-secondary education and it was really difficult, but I wanted to prove I could do it. In total I lived with around 30 other people during this time in and out of different dorm rooms and living with roommates never got easier for me. I also experimented with a lot of different clothing styles, voices, and mannerisms to hide my autistic traits or in some cases enhance my special interests to seem more interesting. I also met many different people who became my "friends" but they couldn't get to know the real me, so it felt even more lonely at times. I have lost contact with most people from school, expect one friend who actually understands me and accepts me for who I am.

My advice would be seek out people who will listen or you share something in common with. Maybe join a club or find an advocacy/support group at the college or in its surrounding area. Hobbies can also help with the loneliness during downtime or if you find everyone you know is busy.