All through grade school, adults around me claimed, “These friends who you have now are only temporary; some of them may stick with you, but most of them probably won’t. You’ll find your more permanent, life-long friendships when you go to college.” I revisited this advice throughout the years, both during times in which friendships were falling apart (“this is alright because these friends are supposed to be temporary”) and times when friendships were seemingly unbreakable (“there is NO WAY this friendship could end after high school – we will surely stay best friends forever”).
It always gave me solace to think that college would introduce me to the people who’d make the whole experience perfect and memorable, and would stick by me for the rest of my life.
When I got to college, however, I realized that I was a bit misguided in how easy the process would be.
It is true to say that college provides innumerable opportunities for making friends. You can meet people in your hall (or in the rest of your dorm), in your classes, in different clubs and organizations, in dining halls, and virtually anywhere else on campus. Although there is never a shortage of potential friends with a campus of over 30,000 people, it can be incredibly difficult to maintain contact long enough to become actual friends. During grade school, you meet your classmates on the first day, and you stay with those same people every weekday for nine months. Then, as you continue through school, it’s likely you will have people from previous years continue in the same classes again. This constant interaction offers students the amount of time that is necessary for forming close bonds and friendship, with no extra effort from the individuals. As much as I wish it could be that easy in college, it is most certainly not.
For starters, a large campus with a large number of students means that rarely (if ever) will you go somewhere and find the same people that you found there the last time you visited (aside from classes, which are still hit-or-miss in this regard). The crowds will constantly be changing. This is also true of your classes; it is incredibly easy to lose contact with a class friend, because your courses and classmates will change every semester. If you don’t take it upon yourself to put forth enough effort to meet with someone again, the odds are that you may never again ‘bump’ into them organically and the potential for friendship is lost. As you’re becoming more responsible for yourself academically, you are also becoming more responsible for yourself socially – forming and maintaining friendships in college will absolutely require effort, probably like you’ve never before experienced.
Many people have similar stories for their freshman year of college: They go to school and are wowed by all the new people they meet, they make tons of friends their first semester, and they think, “where have these wonderful people been all my life?” Then, they go home for winter break and their high school friendships aren’t really the same. Maybe there hasn’t been enough contact to keep the friendship going, maybe they changed as individuals and the dynamic just wasn’t the same anymore; regardless, a majority of people experience a sense of disconnection to their high school friends after their first semester of college. Finally, after tons of excitement to get back to school and new friends (that have surely been making life better more than just four short months), they are disappointed upon their return. There’s this feeling like you’ve been blindsided, and suddenly you’re questioning whether you even really made friends over the last few months. This experience is the eye-opener for a lot of college students, and the time that they begin to understand that they must, must, must truly devote themselves to the friends they want to keep. Otherwise, you both move along in your new crowds trying to make new(er) friends.
Reading this could be somewhat intimidating, but don’t let me give you the wrong idea. Yes, it is more difficult to maintain friendships while you’re in college; however, all of the effort that you have to put into those relationships so that you may keep them results in substantially more emotionally rewarding connections, as well as deeper bonds, with the people you choose to ‘stick with’. Those same people who went through the post-first semester confusion after losing friends claim that they have since found true life-long friends, because they now know how to focus on and prioritize the development of these relationships. Your attention follows wherever your heart leads, so find the people who touch your heart and give them your very best. The more demanding nature of friendships in college means that you may end up with fewer ‘best friends’ than what you had in high school. Remember that this is OK, because the quality of the relationships you build will be far better than anything you’ve had before.
