We all have unique and wonderful perspectives when we finally exit the doors of our homes and arrive at a college, ready to brave the world and all it has to offer without the guiding hands of our parents who have "tied us down" the last nineteen or so years of our lives.
It's an interesting time, the transition between high school and college and the freedom and different setting isn't the only thing that strikes you right away, it is the nature of people, the nature of people that is so different from the people you were so used to seeing everyday roaming the halls of your high school discussing where you were going to hang out after school.
In high school, these friendships were valuable for many reasons, and we continue to cherish them today, but is there a reason why these friendships end up being so much more valuable at times than some college friendships that we make?
In high school, what was important was how numb we were to the idea that friends can really come and go, and we had grown so accustomed to being around the same people, that it didn't really matter when we fought or when a third person got involved to split us up.
College, although so amazing and fun in all it has to offer, starts bringing in different ideals, and takes that numbness away as we constantly see it in ourselves and other people how quick friend groups can change and even unfortunately fall apart. No one is exempt from this, and at one point or another in college, a person will undergo that sort of splitting off process with a friend that could have meant the whole world to them just a mere month before.
This is where I personally start the believe that friendship is made political in college, and rests on very thin boundaries in comparison to friendships that thrive and prosper in high school. In high school, you didn't really have a point to prove to anyone, you were always around the same people and regardless of whether you were a "mean girl" or a "nerd" or somewhere in that middle gray area, nobody really judged you because you had an identity that had been set.
The whole concept of not knowing everyone around makes that difficult in college, friendships are so fragile in college that the introduction of a third person can sever a bond you had with someone for a very long time. It's this very need to impress everyone you meet and the fact that you meet someone new pretty much every day that your mind and heart (maybe unintentionally or intentionally) starts deleting the memories you may have shared with someone you introduced to college.
I can personally say that I am friends with very few of the people that introduced me to UConn to begin with and that saddens me a lot sometimes. A lot of people pride themselves with their capacity for friendship and how faithful and loyal they are to their friends and these are the same people that turn their backs on someone that they may have called their best friend just through the introduction of an external factor that was new. Something new doesn't always it presents something better, and this dire need to always impress the newer people coming into our lives leads us to sometimes forget the people that made our lives as awesome as they are.
