When you’re in school, there are lots of opportunities to meet new people and make friends. You just need to know what these opportunities are and how to use them.

The best thing about school is that it’s a social environment. It may have the primary purpose of educating young individuals, but it also creates a context where many social interactions happen and there are lots of possibilities to meet other students.

With the right strategy in place, you can make use of the school environment to meet people and enrich your social circle. You can become connected, popular and influential in no time by being social and making friends at school.

Considering this, I’m going to describe some of the best ways to meet new people in school, which you can start applying immediately and get results.

1. Take New Classes

If you’re in a modern school, you probably have a lot of freedom regarding the classes you choose. There are optional classes, extra classes and so on. Well, you can use these as ways of meeting other students.

The cool thing about classes is that they naturally get students interacting. They often involve team exercises, group discussions or group projects. So by taking on new classes, not only that you put yourself in an environment with other people, but you also start interacting with some of them naturally.

From there you can pick it up, make conversation and engage in new social interactions with people from your class. Thus, you’re making friends by being sociable and by using the opportunities presented to you.

So, find some new classes and take some of those classes. My advice here is to not be too picky. Remember you’re not doing this primarily to learn something highly useful, but to meet people. Any class that isn’t too hard and is relatively interesting works well.

2. Join a Club

Besides classes, most schools offer a variety of extracurricular activities. Many of these are organized in the form of groups, clubs, teams or associations. And all of these involve a bunch of people interacting to serve a common purpose.

This means that clubs and the likes offer you another important opportunity to make new friends. The first step is to find out about the clubs in your school. You may find out there are quite a lot of them: from sports clubs to study clubs, from the music club to the debate club.

The next step is to visit a few of them and see how you can join. Again, don’t be too picky. As long as a certain club presents a good social opportunity for you and revolves around a somewhat interesting activity, it’s generally a good option.

3. Talk with People Everywhere

Last but not least, remember that a school presents opportunities to meet other students virtually everywhere: from the cafeteria to the library, from the gym to the hallways.

It’s a good idea to get as outgoing as you can and to use any occasion you’re presented with to meet people. Basically, what you want to do is this: every time you’re near another person somewhere within the school, start chatting with them.

Just make light conversation. Ask them how are they doing, how’s they’re day and so on. If the other person is at least reasonably social (and most of them are), it’s relatively simple to move the conversation forward, talk about classes, hobbies and so on.

Your years in school truly are some of the best to meet people, make friends and train your social skills. Schools are social environments which present a plethora of social opportunities. You really want to make use of them.

Author's Bio: 

Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach specializing in social success. If you enjoyed this article, also discover conversation topics and learn how to get out of the I have no friends group from two first-class articles on his People Skills Decoded blog.