On August 18, my best friends and I all had a tearful last embrace before departing off to college. We went through the “of course well talk all the time!” and “it can’t ever be the same! No one else knows me this well!” and then we left. Now, more than two months into it, I am surprised at how few of those girls I still talk to on a regular basis. Everyone says that college changes your relationships, but the degree caught me off guard.
At first, when many of my friends were still at home, it was easy to talk to them. Conveniently, I would call them as I walked to class or to meet some new potential friends for lunch. Short stories were swapped with a I’ll call you later to explain more. It became difficult, however, when everyone went off to school. We all have our own class schedules, meal times, and not to mention, time zones. Those short talks got converted into voice mails. No longer were they daily, but then weekly. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I talk to two people on a regular basis. Going from nine to two – wow.
Now that’s not to say I don’t talk to anyone else. I love the random call when someone has time to kill. It’s great to catch up on everything that’s been going on, but it is harder than I originally thought because the knowledge base is so different. We hang out at different places with different people; our class schedules involve different classes on a different GE curriculum with different amounts of work. A story that could be an easy “I was hanging out with the girls in Mac’s” needs to be “I was hanging out with my three friends, their names are . . . and I know them from . . .and Mac’s Place is . . . “ -it just takes longer.
In addition to that, I’ve become closer with my friends here in a much shorter time span that imagined. People say that you bond with your college friends in a way that can’t be matched by those from previous walks of life, and I really find that true. Through seeing people all day and night every day, you learn about them quickly. They become a huge part of your world; they become your new support system.
Has anyone else felt that the contacts you keep and the new ones you make are turning out much differently than you expected? Am I the only one that really doesn’t stay in consistent contact with all my best friends from high school?
3 comments:
Hey. My situation with keeping in touch with old friends is also the same! At first, it was very easy to keep in touch and call your high school friends every day with an update about your college life. But as our schedules got busier and as I met more people, I now only talk to about 4 of my 15 friends from high school. Although it is upsetting to loose this connection, I have met some of the most amazing, interesting, new friends at SMU which will be my best friends for the rest of my life.
I also wanted to share with you, that college is part of life and growing apart from old friends therefore gaining new friends will only make you stronger. Also, I think that this is a positive change, because when you return home for the Holidays, it will be more exciting to see your old friends and tell all the new, crazy stories about your SMU friends! So get excited, Thanksgiving is only a month away!
My situation is in fact similar to yours. It was not easy saying good bye to my friend right before I headed off to college. I did not have anybody from my high school that is at SMU besides me. I do not have any relatives at SMU so I came in on a fresh slate. I find your situation similar to mine and do still keep in contact with friends from back home. The contact with one friend is still there frequently but with the others it is not. I would say that the contact has been slowly diminishing. When you may go back home to wherever you may be living for the holidays you should be able to visit with the friends that you have been missing.
It's very sad, but all of you are describing the same thing: We tend to be best friends with the people who share our lives, and when we move on to new lives, we tend to move on to new friends too. Even people we think we are in love with, it becomes harder and harder to have a long-distance relationship. When people stayed in one place it was easier to have "friends for life." But the way we live today makes friends for life pretty rare. It takes a lot of effort.
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