When I joined college, I wasn’t doing well mentally. I had just come out of a heartbreak, and I was already regretting my decision to join this university and my major. I don’t like either of them, but I didn’t really have a choice because of my entrance score and honestly, I didn’t make the best decisions during choice filling either.
Still, I tried to stay positive. It was my first time leaving home and living in a hostel, so I thought maybe things would get better. I was meeting new people, making connections, and even got selected into multiple societies after doing well in interviews. I chose to stick with one, and for a while, things felt like they were improving.
But my hostel situation completely ruined my mental peace. I shared a small room with two roommates, no partitions, no privacy. I tried to adjust and be nice, but they turned out to be extremely insecure, immature, unhygienic, and honestly just unpleasant to live with. There was constant negativity, and I started dreading going back to my room every day.
At the same time, first semester was academically tough, and due to hostel restrictions, we had to stay in after evenings, so I couldn’t even escape the environment. I thought I had a friend circle during the day, but that fell apart too and I felt betrayed. I had no one to talk to.
A year before this, I was already isolated at home preparing for entrance exams, and now I felt completely alone again, just in a different place.
I didn’t even feel comfortable opening up to my parents. My dad is emotionally unavailable and my mom panics easily, so initially I just told them everything was fine. But when I finally broke down and told them the truth, they didn’t understand. Instead, they blamed me and said things like “we told you you wouldn’t be able to live on your own.” That made everything worse.
All of this took a serious toll on my mental health. I developed insomnia, struggled through the semester, ended up with no real friends, and even got a backlog with a bad SGPA.
In second semester, things changed a bit. I cut off my toxic friend circle. There was one guy from my hometown who I was just casually acquainted with earlier, but we became close because we had to work together for a regional event. Through that, I met more people from my region.
At first, I didn’t really vibe with them. They seemed very “uncool” and nerdy. But over time, we became good friends. We worked well together, started hanging out more, and even went on a trip together (my first ever trip), which was honestly one of the best experiences I’ve had. I finally felt like myself again.
Since then, I’ve been mostly hanging out with them, and I genuinely like them. They’re kind, supportive, and good people.
But now, after first year has ended, I feel stuck again.
My entire social life revolves around this one group. Outside of them, I basically have no friends. My societies are either inactive or not socially engaging, and everything is starting to feel repetitive. I feel like I missed out on having a broader college experience.
I don’t hate my current friends, but I feel like my social life is limited and I don’t know how to expand it without messing up what I already have.
Did I mess up my first year? And how do I actually fix this going forward?