"Your college friends are the best friends you will ever have."
For those on the verge of graduating, I'm sure some of you feel a little anxious about uprooting your entire life and moving back home or just away from college in general. You're scared about leaving the friends you've made and being disconnected from everyone you have come to know all while trying to become a full-fledged adult.
I'm warning you right now that the first year of post-grad will quite possibly be the hardest year of your life and you're not always going to have your college friends around to be your support system. It does suck, but you don't have to be alone in that.
Your college friends are great. They'll still be in your life and making new friends won't change that. Don't keep the people you meet at a distance just because they're not the same people you met in college.
In this first year of post-grad, you're going to need that support system you had in college. You'll want the kind of friends that will rally around you when you have an interview and it doesn't go well.
You'll want friends that want to go on fun little adventures because graduating college doesn't end your desire to travel.
There'll be days that you don't want to leave the house and that might happen more often than it did in college if you can imagine that. You will make friends that text you to grab food or go out that'll actually you want to get up and go even if you're ready for bed.
These friends will make you want to try new things because you can still be trying to figure out who you are as a twenty-something. Scratch that, you'll most likely still be trying to figure out who you are and you'll want people who understand it.
When I say this might be the hardest year of your life, I'm not even remotely kidding.
So, you're going to need the friends who will laugh with you, cry with you, pray with you, challenge you, and inspire you.
You will know that you made them when you're making elaborate plans for ladies' nights and talking in three different group chats to the same people about so many different things.
They're the ones that genuinely ask if you're okay. And twice just to make sure.
They'll be in your corner in a split second if you need them to be.
And you know you would drive 40 minutes to a coffee shop for them if they needed just to vent for an hour because they would do the same for you.
These friends might have been in my life for the shortest while, but I can't imagine my life without them. I just know that if I didn't have them, my hard year would have been pretty much insurmountable.
Whether graduation for you is next week or next semester, know that your friends in college aren't going away unless you make them.
I know you're scared, but you will make it through this next year. The people that enter your life in this next chapter will absolutely change your life.
