Over break it was great to be able to spend time with my friends from home, but one thing I realized was that it is so much easier getting together with friends who you go to school with than it is when you are home. Perhaps my situation is a little more unique because my friend’s and I are all spread out across the area where we are from but still, nothing is as convenient as living in the same building or down the street from your friends when you’re back on campus.

Planning to meet up:

When I am home it takes a flurry of texts over the course of several days to find a date and a time that works for everyone. You have to make sure no one has pre-existing plans and you have to wait around for people to suggest times or dates that work for them. Although I will say the one large lesson I learned this break is that going forward, it is best to be direct when it comes to suggesting when and what time, instead of just floating a date out there and waiting to see what happens. Now I just have to say, who is free on Wednesday at 2 p.m. and see if anyone wants to hang out.

At school though, after the first few weeks of the semester, you get to have a pretty good idea of what your friends’ schedules are so you know who is free when. You can just send a quick text “Hey want to grab dinner?” or “Hey do you want to go shopping this afternoon” and it’s as easy as that because for most people in college their days revolve around class and socializing so it is easier to quickly throw some social plan together than it may be at home.

Finding a place to meet:

One afternoon at home, I literally had to pull to the side of the street and park for a few minutes as I was driving to the location where I thought my friends and I were going to meet up but then it suddenly changed. So, there I was, parked, texting with my friends to find an alternative location.

This once again may be where the distance between my friends and I comes into play. For us, the first decision is which side of the lake we want to meet on. About half of us live on the west side and the other half live on the east side so there is no majority winner. The other factor is who has a car and when. If someone is without a car for the day we then consider where they can get to easily by bus, or we just come to them.

This is all more complex than what it is in college where my friend may text me to see if I want to get dinner and if it works for both of us we just plan on meeting each other on the first floor of the building we live in. Then once we meet up we think about where we want to go for a few minutes before settling on a place and set out, usually by foot to get wherever we are going for dinner.

All in all, this is to say that being in college and near to your group of friends is something to be grateful for. And really, not just in college either, during any stage of school. It is so much easier to spend time with your friends when you are all in close proximity of each other, like in the same building, or in the same class.

In high school my friends and I got to eat lunch with each other every day, have homeroom together, and sometimes we would spend time together after school. But now that we have all moved on it is harder to see each other and meeting up isn’t as easy as walking down the hall to your friend’s locker.

So although on occasion it can be bothersome to take the extra time and effort to meet up with my friends from high school, I am glad that we are all still close enough to want to take the time to get together when we are all home. And once we do make our plans and get together, it is always a blast catching up with one another and just being back together again.

With this new realization, I will cherish the time and proximity I have with the friends I have made in college. It won't always be as simple as meeting up on the first floor and going to dinner.