Making friends at UH Hilo
A small campus in a small town should make this easy, and for the first fortnight it is. What to do in the weeks after orientation stops doing the work for you.
By YKnot Admin · · 3 min read
Orientation week does a lot of work for you, and then it stops, and around week four a particular quiet sets in: everyone appears to have sorted themselves into groups and you are not sure when that happened.
It happened in week two, mostly by accident, based on who lived near whom. That is worth knowing because it means the thing you are missing is not charisma. It is proximity, and proximity can be engineered.
The small-campus advantage, used properly
UH Hilo is small enough that you will see the same people repeatedly whether you plan to or not. On a big mainland campus you can attend a class of four hundred and never speak to anyone. Here, the person sitting near you in a hundred-level class is someone you will keep running into for three years.
Which means low-effort repetition beats high-effort events:
- Sit in roughly the same place and near the same people. It sounds absurd. It is the single most effective thing on this list.
- Study in public. The library, the same table, the same hours. Being reliably findable is underrated.
- Take the class you are curious about, not only the one on the plan. Hawaiian language, Hawaiian studies, marine science, astronomy — this campus has genuine strengths, and a room full of people who chose to be there is an easier room.
Town, not just campus
Hilo the town is where this actually gets good, and a lot of students never leave the hill.
Saturday market. It is the town's front room. Going alone is normal.
Volunteer days. Shoreline cleanups, loʻi and restoration work, forest and reserve days. There is a task, so nobody has to be charming, and you end up talking sideways while doing something. This is the highest-yield thing available to a student here and it is usually free.
The ocean and the trails, with people who know them. Both are genuinely hazardous to the unfamiliar on this coast — surf, current, entries, weather that changes on the hour. Go with people who know the spot, and treat the first few outings as learning rather than exploring.
Two things specific to here
It rains, so plan in it, not around it. Students who wait for a dry Saturday do less than students who own a rain jacket and go anyway.
Respect where you are. You are studying on an island with a living culture and a complicated history with people who arrive, use the place, and leave. Learning to say place names properly, turning up to things, and listening more than you advise is not box-ticking — it is the difference between being here for four years and being from here for four years.
If you are a transfer or a bit older
You arrive after the first-year bonding and it is a real disadvantage, but the fix is the same and slightly more deliberate: find the recurring things, be the one who suggests the next one, and give any group four attempts before deciding it is not for you.
Also: other transfers exist, and they are all quietly having the same week you are.
The thing that actually works
Pick two things that happen on a schedule — one on campus, one in town. Go four times each. Be the person who says "I'm going Thursday, want to come?"
Four semesters from now the people you do this with are simply your friends, and you will have forgotten that it started as a deliberate act.
YKnot is built for exactly that gap: people here post plans they're already going to — a hike, a dinner, a paddle — with a spare seat, and you ask to join. It's members-only and everyone's ID-verified, so you know who you're connecting with.