High schools and colleges are breeding grounds for new friendships. With clubs, sports, mixed classes, and simply hanging out around campus, meeting new friends is easier than sleeping through all five alarms for your eight a.m lecture. The only downside? Some of these friends will most likely be older than you by a year or two, maybe even three.
Now don’t get me wrong, having friends that are older than you is great. You have someone that knows all the ins and outs of school. They know where all of the best places to eat are, who the best professors are, and the easiest ways to get to your classes on time. They have lived through more on campus and in life alone, making them the perfect person to go to when you need help.
The only downside? Having older friends means they will go off to graduate before you, leaving you alone. This fact is especially hard in their senior year. Everything you do together is most likely for the last time. Your last practice together, the last game, your last party, last netflix marathon in the dorms, and last time being able to see each other everyday without the hassle of planning or being thousands of miles apart. There is a cloud of stress that hangs over you and your older friends to spend every possible moment together, to enjoy each one before it is gone.
The soon-to-be graduate will be too caught up in excitement to realize, but this is a hard time for the friend who will be left behind. When graduation day comes, we will be losing our practice partner, our study buddy, and our Tuesday night Netflix date. The year after the older friend is gone is even rougher. We find ourselves lost, looking for new people to go school events with, new study buddies, or (in my case) rides home from practice, while you are out starting your adult life.
Time is forever fleeting, so enjoy it while it lasts. Go to the big basketball game even though you have a paper due the next day. Continue your weekly froyo dates, even if it means mooching money from your parents. And please, take all the selfies, the candids, the snapchat videos playing around with all of the filters. You’ll appreciate it one night when you’re feeling especially sentimental and you have things to look back on.
