By Jac Cochran
A recent study found that 57% of college students report feeling lonely. Almost everyone is aware of the mental health crisis among teenagers. Thousands of articles and TV segments have proposed causes ranging from smart phones to vaccines. But among all those theories, few have focused on the physical spaces that shape our everyday lives.
Third spaces are social environments — separate from the home and the school- or work-place — where people can gather to socialize, relax, and engage in activities distinct from their daily routines. They are crucial for creating community, fostering connection, and developing social skills. They could also play a key role in improving mental health and belonging among America’s teenagers.
When I arrived at the University of Virginia, I felt excited and hopeful. While incredibly nervous about leaving home, my family and my friends, I was ready to seize everything that UVA has to offer. I wanted to have a rich social life and a successful academic career, to find an intramural soccer team and a go-to late night hangout spot; I wanted to be happy. But college is a big change. Adjusting to an entirely new place with so many new faces and routines can be overwhelming, and finding a place, or group of people, to fit in with can be daunting.
My first year at UVA was lonely. Within a couple weeks, it seemed like everyone around me had found their friends and their place within the university — and that it was already set in stone. While the vast majority of new people I met were very friendly, it just didn’t click. I had a hard time finding my people, I had a hard time even finding a place to look.
In high school, soccer was a big part of my social life. The fields were my third space, where I would spend afternoons after school kicking the ball with my friends. Yet as a first-year without a car, getting to any field was difficult. At UVA, there are no soccer fields near first-year dorms. Whether through bad planning, financial restrictions or city boundaries, the space just didn’t exist. I often needed 45 minutes to walk from my dorm to the nearest field, with no guarantee that a club sports or fraternity wouldn’t be using it when I arrived. Intramural sports suffered from similar problems. Games were held at night, off grounds (UVA speak for “off campus”), at the facility for graduate students. Making the journey by bicycle felt borderline unsafe. My route to these fields was poorly lit and parts of it were without sidewalks or bike lanes. My roommate and I would pedal as fast as possible while also trying to avoid the often reckless, college drivers.
Then, during a somewhat gentler ride to a campus event, I was hit by a car. My bike was ruined, but outside of a few cuts and bruises, I escaped physically unscathed. The real damage was done to my psyche. If I had been hit on grounds in the middle of the afternoon, then think of how likely was I to be hit at night on the dark, windy roads to my soccer games? Biking to faraway activities seemed like less of an option, and I began to feel increasingly stranded.
Soccer had been my outlet and main way of meeting new people; without it, I wasn’t totally sure what to do. On grounds, I couldn’t find places to socialize or relax away from the stresses of school. Libraries were quiet and stressful, my dorm was divided into suites with their doors always closed, and dining halls were filled with students on their phones instead of in conversation. After my first year, I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to come back.
