Being friends with people is different once you’re a fourth year. You have your college friends who you talk to daily, but you also have your old friends from back home.

Although connecting with old friends seems rather easy throughout the first two years of college, you eventually find that it is a lot harder to communicate and hold on to friendships later in your college career. At that point in time, it’s important to understand that this is normal.

Throughout my first two years at UVA, I met up and had fun with my friends each time I went back home. We would either grab brunch or head to the nearest diner for dinner to catch up and laugh about old times.

Nowadays, I tend to either hang out with my parents or run errands that need to be completed back home during my visits. Sometimes I don’t get to see my close friends for months at a time.

However, when we do meet up, it’s like nothing has changed. We’ve grown and learned a lot through our differing college experiences, but our friendship has not dissipated.

To some, this may sound weird, as they may meet up with their close friends every time they come home.

Unfortunately, as I come from New York City and everyone lives far away from each other, that is not the case. Hanging out with friends requires a lot of coordination and communication to just meet each other for brunch. Sometimes I am in town for three days and a close friend is as well, but our schedules just don’t match up during that time span.

Once you’re older, you realize that everyone is busy and constantly has something to do, and it may be impossible to designate a time to meet.

I’ve talked about this with many people, and it seems like that is what being friends with people is like when you’re an adult. It seems crazy that you could go months without seeing the person who you call your best friend, but that is almost always the case if you live far away from each other. People go on living their lives and succeeding in whatever path they choose to pursue without seeing the people they love all the time.

It seems sad, but I promise it’s really not that bad. Being friends with someone embodies a different meaning once you realize that everyone lives their separate lives every day. You learn that friendships don’t dissipate as quickly as they did in middle school or high school, since everyone understands that life is hectic and doesn’t allow for constant meet-ups.

Nowadays I’ll receive random text messages from friends back home with links to funny videos and we’ll still laugh about it together over text and catch up afterward. It won’t seem weird when someone randomly texts you after not speaking to you for a long time because everyone knows that life is a struggle and doesn’t always allow for communication.

When I first realized that this is what adult life entails, I was kind of upset, but it’s simply the way things are and you come to embrace it after a while. It’s not sad, it just is.