You don’t need residence to have a social life
Photo: Daiga Ellaby/Unsplash
If you’re living away from home during the school year, chances are you’ve heard someone — friends, parents, student recruiters, Redditors, the UWindsor Viewbook you got in the mail — mention the “invaluable experience” of living in residence.
While it’s undeniable that dorm life has its benefits, popular claims that maintaining a robust social life is more difficult or even unattainable for commuters are greatly exaggerated. Making new and lasting friendships is far from exclusive to students living in residence, you just need to know where, when, and how to look.
I was born and raised in southeastern New Brunswick. It’s practically a canon event for Maritime high school graduates to attend university out west, and I was no different. After accepting my offer letter from UWindsor, I naturally began researching housing options and figuring out which one was right for me.
Historically, only 1% of first-year undergraduate students at UWindsor are from provinces outside Ontario, while 70% of all undergraduate students are local to the Tri-County region. These statistics — along with endless brochures, discussion boards, blogs, and websites that all argued in favour of residence — fanned my FOMO flames for months until I decided to take a chance and rent an apartment off-campus.
My anxieties were all but soothed when Welcome Week finally came around. At Orientation I met several people who lived in Cartier Hall, and through them I was able to get a small taste of the social opportunities dorm life offered. I met their roommates and their roommates’ friends, attended some Residence Life events, and even got roped into a spontaneous karaoke session or two at V Shine.
The Reddit sages were right: it’s easier to make friends if you live in residence.
I loved my apartment, but I still wondered if I had made the wrong choice. That was until I realized that where I lived wasn’t the problem: it was my method.
If you want to find friends at university, you have to put yourself out there. Don’t play it safe; join one of the over 200 active clubs and societies and regularly attend their events. Emphasis on regularly. Don’t expect results if you only show up to one or two club meetings and never talk to anyone.
Be an extrovert for an hour or two. Strike up a conversation with someone and ask them something other than their year, program, and what city they’re from.
(Photo: Members of the English Undergraduate Student Association, posted to their Instagram page @eusa.uwin on June 3, 2026.)
I met the majority of my closest friends this year, through just one academic society. Getting involved with the English Undergraduate Student Association (EUSA), a club catering to UWindsor’s literary and storytelling scene, radically changed how I felt about living off-campus.
I frequented poetry readings, traded class notes and book recommendations, and made small talk in the student lounge. I dressed up as Ophelia for a Taylor Swift friendship bracelet-making event, even though I don’t listen to her music. I wrote a piece for EUSA’s annual zine, “Generation,” and spent the latter half of the launch party exchanging autographs and numbers with the other contributors.
It was at a EUSA field trip to Stratford, playing Cards Against Humanity with about ten other EUSA members on the hotel room floor at 2 a.m., when I realized I had finally found my people.
If all that can happen after joining just one club, why is living off-campus treated as this great detriment to students’ social opportunities?
Residence may have helped me make fast and easy connections, but the people I’m proud to call my friends today participated in extracurricular activities, volunteered, and frequented club events — not the dorms.
Not every student can live on-campus, but every student can, in the words of EUSA Co-President Maya Roumie, find their coterie.
They’re out there. Start searching.