Practical tips for making friends and building community at university

Second-year student Idriss shares practical advice on making friends at university and building community a little bit every day.

Connection and community are not just nice to haves, but are extremely important for your health and wellbeing - and for creating the conditions for social change. My last blog post explored the importance of building community and what that means within SOAS, but now I want to expand by sharing some tips about how to build a community. Here’s a quick overview of what my experience at SOAS was like.

What you can do to contribute to building a community

If you want community in your life, it is important to have a mental blueprint for how a community can or should look whilst you’re at university, and to have a clear sense of how you contribute to that community.

Whether it is on campus, in your accommodation or any other shared setting, community doesn’t just happen on its own, particularly not in today’s world. It takes intention, effort, and a willingness to show up for others - we all need to be the community we want to see in the world.

The 32 Steps to Togetherness are a set of suggestions of things you can do to help you build a community around you and create connections between different communities. Ultimately, this is what we need to do for health and peace. 

Building community takes intention, effort, and a willingness to show up for others - we all need to be the community we want to see in the world.

The steps range from tweaking your thinking patterns and changing your habits to volunteering and getting involved in politics. In my first year, I found that these 32 ideas helped me channel my desire for community into practical actions. I picked three that resonated and felt doable.

Tip 1: Make peace with awkward moments

My favourite step and first advice to you is to make peace with awkward moments. It can feel awkward to try and connect with new people, which is ultimately what we need to do as we build community. But it's important to remember that the moment will pass and it gets better with practice.

Tip 2: Remember that loneliness is not our fault as individuals

It is important that we remove the stigma around loneliness by acknowledging it is a systemic issue and a symptom of late-stage capitalism (and therefore nothing to be ashamed of). Capitalism creates competition and, therefore, distrust drains our time and energy, promoting narratives of individualism and self-reliance.

Natasha, Founder of Civil Society Consulting, picks on lawnmowers to demonstrate this last point well. People in the same neighbourhood could theoretically share a lawnmower, saving money and becoming closer to one another. However, if that was the case, lawnmower companies would sell just one lawnmower, rather than, say, 36! 

If we acknowledge that loneliness is systemic and therefore not our fault as individuals, we may feel braver to overcome the fear of awkwardness to connect more with others.

Having volunteered for Civil Society Consulting over the last year, I have seen the process of community building in action in lots of different contexts. In this time, I have attended workshops focused on togetherness, in different parts of the country and different age groups, which have greatly changed my community view. 

Without this experience, it is difficult for me to imagine how I would have been able to avoid the impact of the stigma around approaching new people.

Tip 3: Start simple and say "hello" 

I’ve also actioned the steps in my own day-to-day life. The other step, of the 32, which caught my attention was ‘Say Hello’ - which might require you to make peace with an awkward moment or two!

Both struck me as the simplest, but, truthfully, they are the ones which I struggle with the most. Whenever you get the opportunity to say hello, you should take it because it elevates your mood and the other person's mood.

By transforming how you feel, it has the potential to transform what happens next for you that day. And that other person, who may be experiencing loneliness (we all do), might feel more able to connect with others in their life. It is completely normal for interactions to have awkward moments, but that's what makes them human; otherwise, everyone would act exactly the same and life would be boring.

Over the last year, I can honestly say I have had these steps in mind through almost every interaction, and it has made me more sociable, and for the awkward moments that I have had, I don’t think about them half as much as I used to.

What's your next step?

As you can see, I picked steps based on my weaknesses. My advice to you? Consider your barriers to connections, and pick a couple of steps that help train your brain to overcome them. Another approach could be to pick the steps that play to your strengths or chime in with things you’re already doing - the ‘low hanging fruit’, for example. 

Building your community takes effort, and the 32 steps can help give your effort some direction. Check out @stepstotogetherness on Instagram to see the steps in action, and if you are interested in the concept, come down to our events.