Striking up casual conversation at SU can create meaningful connections
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When students imagine the glamorous social scene of campus life, they often focus on parties, clubs, football games and the grand opportunities of a school as large as Syracuse University. What they seldom appreciate are the small moments and social interactions scattered throughout the day.
The exchange in line at Dunkin’, the awkward conversation in the elevator or even the 30 seconds you take to introduce yourself to someone new in class are good examples. Yet, despite being only a few weeks into the semester, students seem to have forgotten these interactions as a relic of Welcome Week — tedious icebreakers you’re forced to do when meeting people in a new environment.
But these seemingly mundane interactions contain part of the solution to the mounting social anxiety and loneliness of college life. A weekly 20-minute conversation with someone you’ve never talked to before can make all the difference.
When I first arrived on campus this fall, my goal wasn’t only to meet people, but to know people. Every chance I got, I sat next to someone I’d never seen before and started a conversation. I found that with every new interaction, campus began to feel smaller.
Soon enough, I was seeing people I knew around SU all the time. Strangers became familiar faces, and those faces became people I could stop and talk to in the hallway, greet at an event or grab lunch with on a whim. That sense of familiarity from the start didn’t just ease my worries — it gave me the courage to embrace everything SU has to offer.
Unfortunately, cold approaching students is easier said than done. Many students experience significant anxiety during normal interactions, putting up invisible walls to limit the awkward pain of talking to someone you don’t know. For many, starting a quick conversation with a stranger may be more difficult than academics. But many students don’t realize that others are far more willing to talk to them than they think.
Abigail Aggarwala | Digital Design Director
According to a 2022 study published on social interaction, people often overestimate how negatively strangers will react to attempts at social connection. In an intervention where participants were tasked with repeatedly finding and talking to strangers over five days, 40% of subjects predicted the first person they approached would talk to them. In reality, participants successfully engaged the first person they approached 92% of the time.
“These conversations really do get easier with practice, and the experience will be more positive than you expect,” the study’s authors wrote.
Critics of this method contend that cold approaching others creates meaningless interactions that take away from the genuine connection of meeting someone naturally. But this argument doesn’t address that waiting around for friends to find you at a university with over 15,000 undergraduates is a losing strategy.
Friends aren’t made by aimlessly walking around at a party — they’re made by cold approaching someone you’ve never seen and setting aside a few minutes of your life for them. What starts as a small conversation in the dining hall could very well turn into something that lasts far beyond the next four years.
Social connection isn’t a passive luxury; it’s an essential skill that requires stepping out of your comfort zone and taking a leap of faith with someone else. Even if it’s for 10, 20 or 30 minutes a week, set aside time to connect with someone new, to learn about them and genuinely care. It’ll be a little awkward at first, but so is life.
The real world is filled with professional, personal and social environments where meeting others in awkward or mundane situations is essential. By not doing everything you can to prepare beforehand, you’re depriving yourself of the extraordinary opportunity college provides to practice these skills.
So, the next time you find yourself waiting in line for Starbucks or sitting alone at Bird Library, put down your phone and strike up a conversation. You might expect an awkward silence, but the reality is most SU students are just as eager to connect as you.
Not every person you meet needs to be your friend, but by giving someone 20 minutes of your time, a simple hello might lead you in a direction you never thought you’d go. Because the best investment you can make in college isn’t always in a career, club or degree. Sometimes, it’s in the people sitting right beside you.
Jude Magnotti is a freshman studying public relations. He can be reached at jpmagnot@syr.edu.
