Back in February 2019, I was preparing to start my first year at The University of Sydney. Like every student starting their time at university, I was psyching myself up to be thrown into unknown and unfamiliar situations. Making friends was my priority even though it brought me an undeniable sense of anxiety. Coming into a university with such a large and diverse student population, I was eager to make friends with all sorts of people who came my way.
Growing up in Western Sydney, my life had been far removed from the areas of Sydney that surround USyd. I had grown up with students from migrant backgrounds both different and similar to mine, as an Asian Australian, so being in a university with more than 70,000 other students from around or abroad was a tangible opportunity to diversify my social circles.
Now in fifth year, it appears to me that, just as the University’s official forms and applications ask whether you’re a domestic or international student, the social scene does too, even if you’re a Sydney local. Everyone ends up looking for people who are like them.
I don’t think that there is a single student who doesn’t dread that first tutorial or lecture of the semester. The strategic selection of figuring out where to sit in the hopes that we end up next to someone who might tolerate our presence. Those awkward but required icebreakers, where we struggle to think of an interesting fact about ourselves whilst our minds are suddenly blank. But even in the short moments of choosing who we sit next to and who we want to get to know beyond the surface level icebreaker questions, we’ve already subconsciously made up our minds, perhaps without even realising. Who we gravitate towards has lots to do with our perceptions of which crowd we belong in. Often, this is who looks like us.
Once in first year, in one of my tutorials, we were given time to walk around and find people to group up with for our assigned presentation. After being shunned from one group, I only managed to find a spot in a group with people who looked similar to me. Even this year, I have had similar experiences and it almost doesn’t faze me anymore.
University is already a tough place to socialise. It’s such a big step up from the support or coddling of school that we’ve experienced for the last 13 years of our lives. All of a sudden we’re thrown into the deep end with at least 70,000 other students, all from different backgrounds with their own personalities. Chances are that many of us have come in alone, not knowing many of the students who we will end up studying alongside. What makes it harder is that unlike our previous 13 years of school, we only get to see the same group of classmates once or twice a week for a few months, before we start to drift from each other. Our relationships become reduced to swiping through their Instagram stories and the occasional like on their posts.
The nature of uni is so fleeting that it is hard for us to form a solid enough connection with someone. Every six months, our classmates change. In this kind of environment, where we know so little about each other, our judgements may fall to what we can outwardly perceive and, with or without ill intent, sees us gravitating towards those we’re familiar with, or those who look like us.
In my case, I have felt multiple times that my Asian exterior is what people see and then they act based on this. To domestic Australian students who aren’t Asian, I might be initially presumed to be an international student. An outsider or “the other”. I find myself innately preparing myself to prove that I am Australian once we get the chance to talk to each other. Once that happens, I might seem different to the international students even though on the outside I look like them. I’m somehow breaking away from one group and yet not quite fitting in with the other.
With my time at uni being almost up, I have learned to let go of those flowery ideals I had at the start of first year that making friends with everyone was possible and have had to settle for finding my own way.
