So, the seniors have graduated and “Pomp and Circumstance" has been played countless times over and over and over again. We get it, they're gone. For the rest of us left behind to continue our four year plan without them, there are a lot of questions. Which brings me to an email I received from Ms. Denell Lewis.
Hi there!
So I'm not really sure how this works, or if you can even submit topics at all, but I was wondering if you could write a piece on what people really do with phone numbers from high school. I ask this because I am still in high school and every year I have to go through the same problem of deleting senior's numbers. Except this year I am especially close to some of them. So, is there a guide that could help me determine what the best thing to do is? Because I know I'm not going to see them again unless we go to the same college, which is unlikely.
Thank you,
Denell Lewis
First of all, I love giving advice about stuff so I am super happy to help. At the same time, we're also going to wiggle in some advice to my fellow college students, because that's what I'm currently struggling with.
I have a massive amount of phone numbers in my phone right now, carried with me and downloaded from the memory card of my 2011 era LG flip phone to now. I'm hoarding these numbers left over from high school, but what am I going to do with them? Am I ever really going to need to call Rodne, the part-time delivery driver at my first job as a cashier at a Chinese restaurant? Nope, probably not, but I still have his phone number just in case.
When it comes to deleting those long forgotten names from high school, I deleted all of the numbers of people I didn't like after graduation. It was quite the cleansing experience. That girl from class who always had a new 40-year-old boyfriend? Gone. That kid who almost asked me to homecoming and thankfully never did? Gone. What remained were the people I knew who would put in the effort to talk to me, or I would put in the effort to talk to them.
So now that you've cleaned out your phone, what's next?
Maintaining a friendship when you're not confined to the same building for six hours a day five days a week is actually kind of time consuming, and know that whether you're still in high school and you have friends going off to college or you're in college and you have friends starting off their real lives, you're the one who is probably going to have to put in more effort to keep the friendship alive. They're going to get overwhelmed with this big step they're taking in their lives, and they may not always think to text you. You have to take the initiative to talk to them.
Almost anyone in college can tell you that you will lose touch with some of your high school friends, but as long as you put in a little effort, you can keep the friends you really care about. Going to college is actually the perfect time to purge your life of terrible friends and just stick with the good ones. At the same time, I've stayed in touch with not only my friends who graduated with me back in 2013, but my friends who are still in high school, because I care about them and I'm willing to put in the effort to talk to them regularly.
For those of us experiencing the college version of this problem, I feel your pain, but I think it's very much the same process. Graduating seniors are moving all across the country now and you have to put in the same effort to keep in touch. You might have to remember that they're in a different time zone, but in this day and age it's still very easy to maintain a friendship and talk to each other frequently. It is entirely possible, you just have to want it.
So go ahead, purge your phone of those numbers that you'll never need again, it will probably free up some space on your phone. Just remember that keeping in touch with the phone numbers you keep is vitally important if you want to keep up that friendship. And the responsibility of shooting them a quick text, as easy as that might sound, is probably going to fall to you as the person they're leaving behind for the next step in their lives. It's nothing personal, life gets busy. Put in the effort for the right people and forget about the wrong ones.
