Edwin DayI get it. The friends you have in high school now seem like friends you’ll have for the rest of your lives. You’re besties! Bros! Sisters! Maybe you’ve even come up with a cute nickname for your core group of pals to commemorate these friendships. As stupid as it sounds, in high school my group of friends and I called ourselves “The Tree People” to remember that one big tree in the back of the campus our group always sat under to eat lunch.
In college, however, you’ll make new friends. And while your high school friends will always have a special place in your heart, college friends can be a real gift.
I don’t want to say college friends are “better” than high school friends, but they certainly will be different than those in high school. In high school your friends were probably in your class or in the same club or sports team. You’ll meet your college friends in different ways, likely based on shared interests and studies, but a crucial difference is that you won’t be “forced” to spend time with them due to school social events and shared classes everybody must take.
Instead, your new friends in college will be genuinely chosen by you.
College is a time of transition. You’re becoming an adult in a whole new, independent way. So the friends you make during this period will have an enormous impact on you, and you’ll meet during a time when you both are in need of friendship and support. This is a big reason why college friends tend to be more long-term.
Also, whether you know it or not, you’re probably recreating the image of who you are into something different than who you are/were in high school. You get to reinvent yourself into whatever you want to be in a new place with new people and new opportunities, for better or worse. Whether you’re becoming more outgoing after being the high school introvert, or becoming the introspective artist after being the high school jock, you’re going to make a lot of those changes while in college, which means running into new people who might better understand or be more like the new you.
Being far away from home is also hard. Many students undergo an adjustment period after suddenly finding themselves with their newfound independence. I’m sure you and your high school friends will all promise to stay in touch, but the reality is, maintaining these relationships can sometimes be difficult because you’re all going through difference college experiences. The friends you meet in college, in a sense, become your new family and support system as you journey through this unfamiliar independence, and this can bring people closer together in different ways.
The diversity you’ll experience in college will also open you up to a whole new world of different cultures, mindsets, perspectives and people. This adds to your personal growth and the evolution of your own personality into adulthood. Your college friends are there with you seeing this transformation, going through their own transformations alongside you as well. In college, you and your friends are together delving into new ideas, philosophies and ways of seeing the world. These shared mindsets become something that will always connect you.
Whether you attend college in a big city, small town, countryside or wherever, you’ll likely be in unfamiliar surroundings and exploring/living in a strange, new place with someone experiencing the same thing is an excellent way to forge new friendships. Being somewhere new in and of itself immediately makes it exciting. The adventures you share exploring your new surroundings together will bring you even closer.
As a result of these natural college experiences, what people tend to discover is that they don’t stay in touch with high school friends as much as they may have promised each other. As you become busier with your studies and social life in college, you’ll probably find that your communication with your high school friends will trail off. You’ll still be happy to hear from one another and hear about major events as years go by, but over time, you’ll feel a little more disconnected from their everyday life. You’ll still appreciate their friendship, as they will yours, but you’ll also be grateful for the new friends you made in college.
And your high school friends will change too! People grow up. Your friends in high school who thought they were going to become professional athletes end up becoming civil engineers, or the quiet loner ends up winning a Grammy for their hit single you hear every time you go out on the town. People change, and move on to bigger and better things.
The bottom line is, high school friends will always have a special place in our lives. When we had braces, or that uncontrollable acne breakout, or that first crush and first heartbreak, they were there. However, college friends are the ones with us as we all, inevitably, become grownups who now have to go out into the real world and do real things with real consequences. College friends are with you during an incredible period of self-discovery and end up knowing the “real you,” and that’s hard to shake off, nor will you want to. College friends are more likely to be the ones you carry with you for the rest of your life.