It goes without saying that friends are great.
However, while friends are fantastic and it's great to have them, the concept of friends definitely complicates when you head off to college. When you get to school for freshman year, you seem to put your friendships from home on hold in order to focus most of your attention on creating new friends (simply for survival). However, once you do that, you have to learn to balance your amazing friendships that you've just created (that have become incredibly strong within a very short amount of time) with the age-old friendships you have at home.
When I first headed off to school, I thought I could balance it. I knew (i.e. hoped) that I would make some amazing friendships once I got to college, and due to the amazing amount of technology us millennials have access to, I thought I could--and would--easily stay in touch with my friends from home. However, come May, I realized I could basically count the amount of times I contacted my friends from home throughout the past year on my fingers. We sporadically texted each other every so often, and there was maybe a Skype or actual phone call once or twice.
Even though our lack of contact may say differently, it wasn't as though we did not want to be friends anymore--not at all, actually. Personally, I just wasn't used to actually putting in any effort to communicate with my friends. Like most, most of my friends I made throughout my general education went to my school, so even if we didn't hang out during the weekend or after school, I would at least them during the day, without having to exude any effort to see them. Then I got to college and realized I took that extremely for granted.
Not only was I not used to having to put in any effort to communicate with my friends from home (i.e. it wasn't handed to me on a silver platter), I was also learning how to fully adjust to living away from home and how to balance my ridiculously full schedule during my freshmen year. This, plus the fact that most of my friends I had from home were experiencing these same things (and then some) at their own schools made it so we rarely contacted each other.
Throughout the few months I was home for the summer, I talked to the friends I decided to at least somewhat contact over the past year, saying that my new "school year" resolution was to keep in touch with everyone a whole lot better.
Unlike most New Year resolutions, I think I will keep this one. Now, looking back on my freshmen year, I hated how much I didn't contact my friends from home. By not texting, or calling, or Skyping, it seemed like I was choosing my friends from college over the friends I made before I left (or at least, that's what I thought it looked like).
This, of course, is not the case. The dynamics between college friends versus friends from home is like comparing apples and oranges. My college friends became the ones I could easily see every day, without having to try, and my friendships with people at home ventured into new territory that I haven't had to really experience before.
While it did take me a year to adjust to these new dynamics, I think that time was exactly what I needed. Throughout my freshmen year, it was like all the relationships I had before were tossed up in the air, and I needed time to see where they landed. Now, I know where they are, who I missed talking to, and how much I want to keep them in my life. I now know how to balance my friendships with the ones I have at school, because I value all the friends I have, both old and new.
