Hi Buddy,
I guess I'm in a similar boat to you. I'm starting my first year at a university where I don't know anyone and I find it difficult to make friends. I used to constantly have similar thoughts to you about not knowing what to say and worrying about annoying other people. I guess, one of the things that helped me with that was to focus on what other people are doing more. Sometimes I see people act in ways that I find annoying, but those kinds of people still have a lot of friends. Also, if you really pay attention to other people (for example in a group setting), most of the time they aren't saying anything particularly interesting for example assignments, or classes.
I'm planning to join some clubs (or maybe volunteer somewhere) at Uni and just force myself to get involved some way. I guess if you have something else to focus on, it becomes a bit easier to make friends. I also think that if you make one friend it will become a lot easier to meet more people (friends of the friend).
I'm still pretty shy, but I used to be a lot more shy and one of the ways I become more confident was I took every small opportunity to talk to someone and usually something that made me a bit uncomfortable. Without doing anything I found too overwhelming or scary, I slowly started to feel more confident (and I'm closer to doing those things which really scare me now). The thing is, you can never avoid meeting people who won't like you and everybody is awkward sometimes, but you can control how you respond to that and think "well, that was a bad interaction" and move on. It's not necessarily your fault either.
Anyway, it's normal to feel nervous. Also, just because you feel nervous doesn't mean you can't do something. Something that has helped me with shyness is that I try to think of interacting with people as "work" or "practice". For example, I think "I'm just going to talk to this person for myself and for practice" and it puts less pressure on me in some ways, as well as, if it gives me motivation to push through the discomfort because I know I'm trying to improve. I see making friends as more of a bonus.
Also, if you worry about people liking you, maybe it's better to ask "do I like this person?". Usually for me, I don't have a strong opinion either way and I imagine people feel that way about me. People in generally are pretty willing to help if you need it too.
I hope this helped. Good luck this year. I'm sure everything will be fine!
CB 🙂
