Getting a girlfriend feels like an impossible task

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It is very difficult to meet new people in some places, even just for friendships.

The city I live in is a small city and has all the necessities, but nothing more.

There are no particular clubs or groups for my interests.

The few clubs that do exist are a few sports clubs, religious groups, gardening, arts/craft/knitting, and farm markets/trading.

These are typically not something a teenager or young adult will be interested in, and a large sum of middle-aged adults as well.

The two swimming pools are very low quality, even for swimming pools they suck. The water is hot, it's grimey and digustingly maintained.

We have the highest amount of parks in the entire country, but what the news doesn't tell you is the vast majority of them are poorly maintained, ugly, hotspots for criminal activity and meetings, filled with litter, beer bottles and user syringes. However, even the few gems we do have get boring very quickly, as most teens and young adults aren't interested in parks.

I'm under 18 so it's even harder as I can't join Meetup.com groups yet, but even the young adults here don't have much.

They have to rely on the one single (and cr*ppy/low quality/seedy) nightclub and the few dozen bars we have, and these places aren't ideal to meet relationship material, as most people of these establishments will want one-night stands or FWBs.

This city is a part of Australia's 'bible belt' and is very conservative. Racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. are all prevalent. The crime rate here is one of the highest in the country, as well as youth depression and substance abuse.

Interestingly, our youth and elderly rates are high, so we have a lot of young people here and elderly, but absolutely nothing caters to the youth. There is a lot here for the elderly and my Mum calls this place a 'retirement village' but the youth have jack-sh•t.

You tell me what one is supposed to do to meet someone here.

I can't go to the university here as my family is planning to move soon, it doesn't have the class I want to take, and it's expensive to transfer once my family does move.

Social interaction?

I've improved my social skills to a significant degree. My only real difficulties are my extreme anxiety to new situations or experiences.

Interestingly, as much as I enjoy social interaction, I seem to have Agoraphobia.

I have a fear of going places alone and it's this bad city to blame. Every time I leave the house, solo or with friends/family, we get rude looks, glares, or other kinds of trouble when all we do is mind our own business.

My Mum continues to tell me 'you get that everywhere, there are bad people everywhere'.

I agree, but what she doesn't seem to understand is that this city seems to be WORSE than most others.

A few weeks ago I was walking in the streets of a coastal city with a friend. It felt so much more quiet and peaceful, and everyone minded their own business instead of feeling the need to intrude on my life and give me death stares.

The city i use to live in, another coastal city with one of the lowest crime rates in the state, I also felt very comfortable going around in.

I have plans to, but from the very beginning, Australian universities are far more academic focused.

There are some clubs/groups at some of the bigger universities, but still very few compared to American colleges.

Also, even if you choose to live on-campus, most Australian colleges are just a few large buildings with one or two set-up to be dorms and the others for classes.

It's not like the U.S., where universities can be the size of entire suburbs or, in the case of university towns, an entire town and there are actual streets within the campus.

There aren't frat houses here.

It's more an establishment here than anything else - the main building, the parking lot, the grounds/open-spaces, the dorm building/s, a football oval possibly (there's not usually sports though at most anyway, in fact I don't think a 'sports' scholarship or anything exists. You can study health/physical education but it's to be a sports coach/teacher and such, not an actual athlete.).

American colleges are academically-inclined as well....in addition to being places where intelligent discourse is possible.

Same as Australian universities, in that sense.

Lol where?

Australian large universities are like their own towns. They have their own postcodes and that. Its quite huge. For instance I go to University of Queensland. It have over 50,000 students. 8 colleges. 250 clubs and societies. The university itself is in suburb of St Lucia. It span over large area.

University of NSW, Sydney, Melbourne, Monash and Macquarie are other large universities that are easily comparable to the US colleges.

I have been to the US as well. I went to UW @ Madison. Its quite large and complex. I know there are of plenty universities across the states are familiar to Australian ones.

But there is a difference between ours and then US ones. Our colleges are more alcoholic than American ones. In the US, people are too busy working to get paid, because our fee system is different. Our government pay our fees, hence lazy drunken college students. Americans are like workaholic rather than alcoholic.

True.

Well I know for a fact USQ Toowoomba, Griffith Gatton, USQ Ipswich, JCU Cairns, Brisbane SAE, are all fricken tiny - have seen them all.

It's not really worth living on campus if all that means is class is the next building over when there's no streets/it's not neighborhood-sized.

I see living on-campus as feeling like living somewhere else to your home, like another town or whatever. Feeling like you're living in a unit when your house is in the same city, you might as well live off-campus.

I know U.S. colleges can be the size of an entire town, where the entire town is quite figuratively the campus.

And yeah, University of QLD is what i'm talking about. Looks like there are some.

It's just, being in the small location I am, the universities we end up with are the tinier ones.