College is the time of your life where you make many friends and go through different situations. You learn things about yourself and other people. College life is incomplete if you don’t interact with other people.
Some people find it pretty easy to connect with others, while it can be difficult for others. The main reason for this happening is the lack of social skills. Social skills can affect many areas of your life, and the people with a good grasp of these skills will stay ahead.
Because of that, it becomes vital for college students to learn about social skills. You can learn a lot about social skills during your college years by practising them with other people and refining them over time.
Although you can learn by trial and error, there are some tips you have to know. The tips will help speed up the process and make you a pro at striking a conversation with anyone. So, in this blog, you’ll learn about 10 tips to improve your social skills in college.
These tips have worked for many and will work for you. Let’s begin.
Improve Your Listening Skills
We know you’re wondering why you have to work on listening skills when you have to strike conversations with people. But you really have to work on them. That’s because conversations are a two-way process. Only if you listen to the other person will you know what to say.
Most people in today’s world hear other people. And hearing is different from listening. In the case of hearing, you intend to reply immediately. But in listening, you understand what the other person has to say. Based on that, you reply to them.
Remember, you want quality conversations with people, which can only happen when you actively listen to them. Otherwise, you lose the essence of conversations.
Start Complimenting
You love when you get compliments on your amazing shoes, your hairstyle, or so many other things. Guess what, everyone likes when someone compliments them. That’s because humans crave praise and compliments. Many people go to extreme lengths to get compliments. We don’t want you to do that.
We want you to give genuine compliments to other students. If you like someone’s smile, tell them they have a great smile, or if you like how they talk, tell them that. Don’t let shyness come in the way because people receiving compliments will rarely question why you’re doing so.
Work On Your Body Language
Body Language tells people about you without you speaking anything. It is even stronger than the words one speaks. You may have seen some people who enter a room, and everyone looks at them because of their charm. That is because of their body language.
The hand movements a person does while talking, the standing posture they have, and the direction of their body towards the listeners are all signs of positive body language. But if a person does things opposite to it, it is considered negative body language.
The thing about body language is that people subconsciously notice it. So, if you want to have good social skills, you have to work on body language to impact people positively.
Stop Negative Self-Talk
Negative self-talk is the biggest enemy to your growth. It stops you from achieving things you easily can. Many influential people have said that people who can control their minds and thoughts can do and achieve anything in life.
So, do you really think you cannot interact with other students in college? You have to rethink because it’s your mind playing tricks and telling you about the lack of confidence and other problems that don’t even exist.
Get out of your head and try interacting with people for once. You’ll discover you don’t lack any skills. It’s the lack of effort from your side stopping you.
Do Activities In Real Life
With everything getting online and the option to order and do things in one’s home, people have stopped going outside. This is negatively affecting today’s generation because they don’t know how to interact with other people.
Moreover, the streaming platforms have also discouraged people from going to theatres. All activities, when done from home, leave no chance for you to interact with other people.
You have to stop living in your room and get out in the real world to improve your social skills. You can go to shops, instead of ordering things online. If you feel like eating something fancy, you can go to a restaurant instead of ordering food online. Small changes can bring significant change in you and improve your social skills.
Stop Using Your Phone In Social Situations
Smartphones come with a host of benefits. They’ve helped ease people's lives in many ways. Despite the benefits, smartphones have given rise to some serious health problems. Apart from the health problems, they have also hindered peoples’ ability to interact.
You may have seen students who use phones all the time. As soon as a class ends, they get busy on their phones. Some use it so much that they can’t keep their hands off their phones when someone else is speaking.
People also use smartphones in social situations to avoid conversations. Make sure you don’t do that because your goal is to improve your social skills. So, next time, when sitting with people, keep your phone aside and talk with them. In the beginning, you might find it difficult, and your subconscious reaction will be to grab your phone. Don’t give in.
Interact During Clubs
During college, you’ll get an option to choose between sports clubs, music clubs, and many other clubs. You’ll have to choose one. And when you start attending the club, you’ll discover all the students who share the same interests as you.
In clubs, you get the perfect opportunity to interact with other students. Don’t worry about the icebreaker because there’s already one thing in common- interest. Based on that, you can strike conversations.
If you still feel it’s difficult to talk with other students, you can ask them about your genuine concerns. For example- You didn’t understand something in the music club. This is an opportunity for you to ask other students and know about the issue and the students in a better way.
Ask Lots Of Questions
During a conversation, it is pretty common to run out of things to say. If you find yourself in such a situation, there’s an easy way to keep the conversation going. And it is by asking questions to the other person.
Know that you have to ask easy questions like where they come from and why they have certain interests. You can even ask them whether they completed the recent assignment or not. When you ask easy questions, they can answer them without having to think a lot. They’ll also appreciate you for taking an interest in their lives. Remember, you don’t want to ask personal questions if you don’t know them too well.
When you ask questions to other people, they’re more likely to ask you some questions. It becomes a two-way conversation, and both of you will end up knowing about each other.
Keep Eye Contact
Have you seen how confident people look other people in the eyes? Looking directly into another person’s eyes is a great way to show them that you’re confident. People who’re naturally good at it leave a great impression on everyone they converse with.
Moreover, persuading people is easy when you maintain eye contact. It is believed that the people who look in different directions while talking cannot be trusted and are usually hiding something.
So, if you don’t look people in the eyes while talking, start doing it because it will benefit you in making connections. You’ll start feeling confident once you start looking people in the eyes.
Apart from making friends and striking conversations, eye contact is highly beneficial if you give presentations. During a presentation, you have to look at the audience. You cannot look at a single person throughout your presentation. You’re interacting with the entire audience, and they have to feel valued. All the leaders and CEOs work on eye contact because they know how vital it is.
Smile More
Your smile tells other people that you’re friendly and approachable. It is crucial in starting friendships. You may have seen people who have serious faces all the time who don’t have many friends. It’s because people want to make friends with people who have a relaxed vibe.
When you were in school, you created perceptions about your teachers. In your opinion at that age, some teachers were the best, and you didn’t like some others. The reason for that was that the teachers you didn’t like rarely smiled, which told your subconscious mind that they’re not good. But that’s not how things work. Not everyone who doesn’t smile is a bad person.
But it isn’t easy to teach our minds that the reason a person is not smiling could be because of different reasons. So, knowing this, you have to start smiling more because you cannot explain to everyone why you don’t smile.
Conclusion
It is not too difficult to improve your social skills. You easily learn things when you’re young, and it is even easier to start implementing them.
With these 10 tips to improve your social skills in college, you’ll know the things that can take away all your social anxiety.
The tips we highlighted in this blog can even be used by people not studying in college.
