Senior year of high school has this magical ability to mend friendships and mesh cliques together, connecting them all through one fact: the end is near.
College has a similar effect. People who I never talked to in high school will stop on the South Oval and ask me how I'm doing. It's strange and comforting at the same time. Seeing people from high school on campus, no matter how unfriendly they were in high school, brings back the familiarity of high school. I may have dreaded high school, but at least I knew what to dread. There was this monotonous pattern. Whereas, in college, life is unpredictable and messy. The worst part is that it is an unknown territory.
I think everyone knows this deep down and feels lonely to some extent. I always tell people you are never alone in your loneliness, just look around. It's easy to be nice to people you were never kind to before in an environment that is unknown with a group of friends that you don't know.
Most of my high school friends went to the same college, and I was the outlier. I was always told to never pick my college based off of my friends. Freshmen year made me doubt that advice, but college has caused me to grow personally in ways I don't think I would have grown in if I had all my high school friends around me.
I've learned to be assertive in my classes, which I'm still working on, and speak my mind. I've had to learn to quit caring about what other people think of me. A life full of people-pleasing is a life others want you to have and not the life you want to have.
While I may have created a whole new friend group in college, my high school friends are still some of my closest friends. When I see them, we just pick up from where we left off. I think the important part of keeping friendships over a long distance, no matter how small the distance, is intentionality.
While I may not see them every day like I did in high school, I still make a point to text and call them throughout my week to make sure they are doing okay. It lets your friends know you care about them, plus you never know what they are going through in their own lives. They may need that particular text or call that day.
Intentionality is imperative even in friendships in college. I don't have classes with most of my friends, so the only time I see them is when we both have time to spare, which is rare. High school forced me to see my friends every day, whereas college makes it easy to disappear.
Keeping in touch with high school friends and college friends is equally important. College is an awkward transition from childhood to adulthood, and we all could use the company as we blindly stumble through life searching for a road map.
