Before I start anything, I think it would help to tell you a little about myself and my experience at U of T thus far, especially my first year. I’m a Rotman Commerce student about to start my fourth and final year specializing in Accounting. The Rotman program was launched in 2oo8 – the year I started my journey at U of T. Then, the program had about 1,200 students, and most of my first year classes contained no less than 500 students, as is the case with most first year courses (usually, but not always, held in the dreaded Con Hall). This made it difficult to meet new people and make new friends. The classes were so large that the people you sat beside changed on a daily basis. As a result, you could go days, if not weeks, without seeing  people you may have met in class. Simply put, it can be difficult for U of T students  to make friends. Here is one tip I found helpful, and that you should follow to make sure you don’t experience what I, and many others before me, experienced as a first year student:

Talk to strangers! Your parents may have advised against this in the past, but this can get you a long way when it comes to meeting new people. Don’t be afraid to talk to the fellow student sitting beside you, or who you see multiple times a week. Introduce yourself, exchange e-mail addresses, phone numbers etc. They’re probably in the same position as you, and will be just as excited to meet someone new. I can vouch for the fact that U of T students are friendly and won’t bite. In fact, I would say that I made most of my U of T friends this way (and I remain bite-free).

You can’t simply expect to run into your old high school buddies on your first day here because, chances are, you won’t. The campus is simply too large, and the amount of courses offered, including the different time slots available for each course, are in the hundreds.  I know about twenty high school classmates who chose to attend U of T and, over a three year period, I have only run into one of them once about two years ago.

There are other ways to meet new people and make new friends, but talking to strangers is fail safe, and is sometimes your only option.

Enjoy your first year at U of T! Expect to hear more from me in the weeks and months to come. Cheers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under General, On Campus, Opinion, UT Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.