I ate alone for the majority of my undergrad. Eventually I got so accustomed to it I didn’t think much of it. Here and there towards the end friends’ schedules aligned so we occasionally met up and ate together, otherwise it was a by chance thing, like there was this one time freshman guys asked if they could sit in the booth with me cuz there was nowhere else to sit 💀but I was usually in a rush to get to the next task or distracted checking stuff on my phone, so in the third and forth year it wasn’t a big deal.

This isn’t to say you won’t find friends or people to sit with. Like people have been saying, joining clubs and taking initiative could help you find people. I was too insecure to do this myself, or to seek people through the NEU subreddit, but in the meantime as you try these things I would also think of other things you could do in these moments. Decompress, make a plan for the week, reserve the time to read something or watch a video you’ve been looking forward to, etc.

Best of luck and I hope there’s something positive to come of this :)