Forming new friendships, becoming interested in others

I just moved back to college about a month ago. I have one best friend who goes here and about 10 other good acquaintances.

I am having difficulties with those 10 friendships. I was playing volleyball with a few of them, and just have a hard time being myself around them. I get quiet, self-conscious around them. They have branched out and met new people, but I haven't.

This isn't just a problem with them though. It seems like all my old friends are making new friends, and I'm stuck in the past.

I just don't have a drive to meet new friends. I WANT to have this drive, but if any of my buds want to go to a party somewhere, I just want to go home because I'm not interested in others at all.

If I'm talking to another person, I can barely ever keep a conversation afloat because I'm not curious about them.

Last night, I was hanging out with 4 friends, and I was fine. Then two people I don't really know walked in and I got, again, quiet and self-conscious. We then decided to walk to a party, and I just went home because I had no desire to be around new people.

I WANT to have an interest in new people, but I just don't right now. Why could this be and how could I change it?

One hypothesis of mine is that I form prejudices (not in a racial sense, but literaly pre-judgments) about other people. I have one encounter with them, or maybe no encounters at all and just hear about them, and I feel as if I know all about that person. I think I need to look into other people, and not just at them. This hypothesis doesn't help me though.

Can you?

I generally tend to feel the same about meeting new people. I just don't like it and have no motivation too. Not exactly someone that can walk into a party and strike up a conversation. However being someone that doesn't follow my friends (for example I chose a university that I wanted despite where my friends were going) i always ended up in a situation where I knew no one (especially as I moved away from my family). And that can get lonely pretty fast. So I learned a couple of things that allowed me to meet new people without feeling too uncomfortable.
Basically I knew one person when I moved here and as he was in the sci fi club at university I went along for a meeting (all you do is watch movies it's great). For the first couple of weeks I sat and watched everybody and whenever someone came and said hello to me the basic convesation was "hello, what do you study?". This is what I normally do in situations with lots of new people. It gives me time to make judgements of my own about people as I am watching as they interact in a social setting and I've found other peoples judgements are not always reliable. Over time what happens is certain people keep turning up and they begin to become familar to me and I feel less uncomfortable talking to them and as I have handpicked my friends rather then being friends with everybody I end up with some really good ones.

Hello,
I have been dating since I was 15 years old.I love to meet new people and do friendship.
Sneh
http://tinyurl.com/67ffc4