> That said, I do know that despite my social anxieties, I tend to be pretty comfortable talking to people I don't know that well (if anything, more so than people I do), so that might have made it easier than I realised.

In retrospect, some of it is probably social anxiety.

But I think the bigger part is simply feeling a lack of connection with other people in the dorm. Other than living together we were all leading entirely separate lives. Different majors, different friend groups, etc. We'd see each other in the evenings but that was pretty much it.

The size of the school (~30k students) also didn't help me - the chances of me sharing a class with someone in my dorm were pretty low. Even big classes like Composition, there's probably 40 different composition classes being taught at any semester. I did have one or two people from my History class in my dorm, but that class had 400 people in the auditorium, so not really conducive to discussions. I was just one fish in a really, really big sea.

It was compounded by being an out-of-state student from a long way away from home. Many of the people in the dorm with me were in-state students, many from the same large high schools in the major cities. They came with a built-in networks of friends, many of whom were in the same or adjacent dorms. I knew one other person from my city at all, and he lived on the other side of campus.

So in my particular case, I had a lot working against me. I have no problems believing many people had a great time socializing in dorm life, but I just couldn't develop a connection with anyone there because of the sheer magnitude of the issues.

Which was kinda why it was so weird my friend invited me to rush. We'd sat next together in Intro to Engineering and chatted a few times, maybe sat together once in the cafeteria and studied for class, but not exactly what I would have called a deep connection. It was really surprising when I was offered that invitation.

In a fraternity, though, you are forced to build that connection. It's pretty much the entire point of the organization. If you want to be a part of the organization, you have to be a part of the brotherhood. You have to develop a connection with those in your pledge class (those who join the fraternity the same time you do), or you drop out or get dropped out.

I started with a smaller number of people that I could get to know (there were 11 people in my pledge class, a much smaller number for me to work with). And because we had tasks to work towards together, both as a pledge class and as an organization, we learned to work together with each other. I can't speak for every fraternity, but mine was super, super big on requiring us to work together. There was only one thing we were ever asked to do as individuals. Every single other thing we were expected to do as a class or as an entire organization. With requirements like that, I couldn't help but get to know people.

I'm not saying this type of thing is for everyone, but it really did work out well for me and for everyone else in my pledge class.

> One thing that does occur to me though, is in the UK alcohol is readily available to students. I realise US colleges are hardly dry, but I'd imagine it's not quite the same as the UK, where almost every student will have their own stock of preferred drinks ready for any social occasion.

My school, a large state university, was actually completely dry (officially, at least). Part of it is the drinking age in the US is 21, so only upperclassmen are even above that level at all. But even if you were over 21, alcohol was prohibited on campus. All the dorms, buildings and grounds were dry.

But this was pretty widely ignored, even by the administration. Generally speaking, as long as you weren't making an ass out of yourself or driving, you were okay. Sophomore year I traded beers with my RA (the person in charge of the dorm) on a pretty regular basis.