A culture of disconnect

Navigating silences in the university classroom

Before I began university, a slew of school webpages and recruitment handbooks promised me exciting lectures. They were described as a place for discussion and debate among peers, where a meeting of minds would occur. I arrived at my first lecture, preparing myself for the intellectual supernova I was promised, and instead I got silence. 

In my first few classes—after the frantic friend-making days of Orientation—I had a few forced conversations with people I happened to sit beside. But these never went much beyond basic introductions and the often-asked, “So, what program are you in?” As the weeks went on, even those conversations died down. Both lectures and tutorials began to feel like an endless ride on the TTC: each person remaining solitary and unwilling to acknowledge those around them. 

In large lectures, this is understandable. That person you met awkwardly on the first day often disappears into a horde of other students never to be seen again, and that’s hardly because they’re avoiding you. It’s easy to stay anonymous in such an impersonal environment, but even in smaller lectures and tutorials I feel the same sense of isolation. In these small groups where there should be nowhere to hide, this problem often feels heightened. Without the excuse of a large lecture size, we sit surrounded by faces we recognize, people with voices and opinions we are already familiar with, and still there is a silence no one seems willing to break. The ten minutes before my tutorials are often the most painful; we’re trapped by the discomfort of that silence but also don’t want to be the one who begins the conversation.  

While there are times when I like the quiet and want to focus, in many of my classes, I often feel lonely. When I am in a lecture where I don’t recognize a friend, I feel lonely. When my professor says, “Turn to your classmates and discuss this problem,” and the person beside me stares stoically ahead, I feel lonely. It’s no secret that university can be a time of isolation for many students. After the forced comraderie of high school, an experience often shared with classmates you’ve grown up with, the new terrain of a university classroom can be challenging. Compared to high school classes, a university lecture is certainly more sequestered.   

As I sit in my lectures, surrounded by a rainstorm of clicking keyboards, this isolation feels strange. The irony of it is that I am surrounded by other students, many of whom likely share this feeling of loneliness, yet we all continue to do nothing. The people around me are sharing a common experience, but making the first move feels too difficult. I am not an unsocial person, but in these rooms, I often don’t feel as though socialization is welcome. Many people may come to university determined to focus only on their studies, but I think there are many like me who simply feel too awkward or too anxious to reach out.  

Lectures and tutorials are not usually spaces of socialization, so approaching someone in these environments can be scary. I have rarely seen someone strike up a conversation with a classmate they didn’t already know, and as the semester goes on people seem less and less willing to meet their peers. After being handed connections in high school, it can feel alien to go out of your way to make friends in university. If you don’t make a conscious effort, it’s easy to go through your courses without meeting anyone. Most of the friends I’ve made in my time here have been through extracurricular activities or living in residence, not in academic spaces.  

How can we develop a campus community if the main activity we share as students pushes us into isolation? Perhaps this issue is aggravated by how academically focused UofT students are, or how communicating in person is unfamiliar to a generation engrossed in technology. Regardless of these contributing factors, this culture of isolation in lectures ultimately will not change unless we carry ourselves differently. Rather than going through our lectures on friend-making airplane mode, I think many of us would be happier if we strove to look around and notice all the likeminded peers around us who await connection.