College is arguably the best time of your life. It’s the first time you’re really on your own. You get to experience new things, live in a new environment, explore new places, and meet new people. You really grow into yourself and discover who you’re going to be.
But with all that, many people lose sight of where they grew up. I’ve met many people who are bitter towards their years spent in high school and, ultimately, the friends they made there. I’ve heard of people who have dropped their old friends the moment they graduated. They feel that college is meant for parting ways so that everyone can grow on their own. For some, graduation day was really a goodbye to the people they sat next to at the lunch table every day. This idea is insane to me.
The thought of ever ditching my “high school” friends has never crossed my mind. I have no desire to ever do so. I know for a fact that I am shaped by the people I grew up with. I met my closest friends back in middle school and we have stuck together ever since. We are a very diverse group; each of us has a very different personality from the next–different interests and different aspirations. But these differences are essential to why we work together. We complement each other all while keeping each other in check. Needless to say, there have been countless bumps in the road since and we have had our fair share of fights, but all of that only strengthened our bond. They are quite literally my family and they always will be.
I have learned so much from my high school friends; many of those lessons coming from our final years in school together. For starters, I learned the type of people I want to surround myself with. Everyone struggles to find where the really fit. Some still do so even in college, but I was lucky to find the puzzle I belonged to very early in my life.
I also learned the type of atmosphere I feel comfortable being present in. A lot of high school is spent struggling to fit into the “party scene.” Teenagers are so eager to go out and be rebellious that they lose a great deal of their innocence. Thankfully, like myself, my friends were never interested in that type of mentality. This is not to say that we didn’t have our so called “rebellious” nights and attend an occasional party or two, but we never felt that we needed to do so in order to have fun. Rather, the majority of our Friday night hangouts consisted of ordering Buffalo Wild Wings and playing board games. It was calm, it was comfortable, and it was always enjoyable (unless someone decided to screw someone else over in a game of Catan).
My high school friends played a key role in developing my personality. Looking back on who I was eight years ago and seeing who I am now, I know that there are pieces of each of them in me. A lot of my sense of humor comes from them, along with my perspective on people and the world we live in. This sounds super cheesy, but my friends and I have all been exposed to obstacles that really affected how we perceive things. I think that without them, not only would my own obstacles have been difficult to overcome, but my attitude afterwards would have been very different.
Another reason I will never outgrow my high school friends is the sheer fact that we share too many memories. We have been through so much together (ex: high school sporting events, sweet sixteens, eighteenth birthdays, prom night, senior banquet, summer vacations, graduation, and leaving for college)–events that we can never share with anyone else. These are all precious memories that can never be repeated and so, having a group of people to remember them all with is truly something special.
The last and probably most important thing I learned from my high school friends is simply how to be a friend. With them, I learned how to comfort someone in need. I learned the best way to help a friend through a breakup. I learned how important it is to constantly remind a friend how important they are to you. I learned the value of selflessness. I learned the value of generosity. I learned the value of trust. I even learned that sometimes friends need a break from each other and that that’s okay because you will always find your way back.
College has in no way destroyed my bond with my friends back home. Rather, I believe it has made it stronger. I think that not seeing each other every day anymore has made us all realize just how much our friendship means. Though it is cliché, it is no joke when people say distance makes the heart grow fonder. Plus, it means that when we all do reunite over breaks, we’ll have plenty of things to catch up on (and that includes all of the board games that have been neglected during our absence).
