Today is International Friendship Day! In celebration, here are some tips for making friends when you start university!

1. Remember you’re all in the same boat! Everyone wants to make friends and find some reassurance during freshers week and first term. But don’t put pressure on yourself to be best friends with the first person you meet. You might not gel with your flatmates but there are plenty of other places to find friends.

2. Leave your door physically and metaphorically open. During freshers week be open to meeting many, many new people. Talk to anyone and everyone, attend the events – whether that’s the nights out or the day time events and try not to shut yourself away. Inside your flats try and keep your door open to encourage conversation with your flatmates!

3. Societies. Not only are they great for trying new activities but they are a fantastic place to meet people with similar interests and personalities to you.

4. Your course. Lectures can be vast rooms full of people but your seminar groups can be much smaller and a good opportunity to get to know people on the same course as you. It can be very reassuring to have someone to get stressed with about essays and to ask about reading.

5. If you have friends from school or college, try not to rely on them. University is a chance to grow as an individual. You are likely to change from the person you were at college and sometimes the people that you were friends with at 16 years old are not the people you would choose to be friends with at 20 years old. This doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it just means you’ve grown up and grown apart.

6. Part time work. It might not be the first place to go for friends but getting student jobs can be a fantastic place to mix with people that you wouldn’t normally meet. Jobs like student ambassador often have socials that come with them too!