Now that everything’s online (and we’re almost done with the semester), it’s a lot more difficult to keep up with your IRL friends than it was before, especially if you were on campus. Here are a few things to add to your normal communication habits that might help you out!
- uQuizzes
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If you haven’t heard of uQuiz, I both envy and pity you. I’ve spent so many hours finding and sending quizzes to my friends and comparing results. It’s basically like every other personality quiz site out there, but you should definitely take advantage of the ones that promise to read you like a book. My personal favorites are “let me psychoanalyze you but also be nice”, “i judge you and you learn whether you should trust my judgement or not”, and “How would you dress as a man in the 1950s?”
- iMessage games
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Okay, hear me out. We’ve all played them before. We’ve all gotten inevitably tired of playing cup pong or mini golf when we’re bored. However, if you FaceTime (or Skype, or Zoom) your friend while you play, you get all of that fun and inevitable frustration in a way that feels more connected. Obviously, this will work for other games too (try playing Among Us with a big group!) One of my favorite things from this semester was playing cup pong with my friend from a different school because she would always start a game when I was in my least favorite class of the day. We rarely see each other in person, even during a normal school year, but this has been a fun component of our friendship over the last four years.
- PowerPoint nights
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I haven’t personally done one of these (yet!), but from everything I’ve seen, they look amazing and super fun! Make a slideshow about something that you love (or that you think is really funny) and educate your friends. Check out #powerpointnight on TikTok or any other social media site for ideas. If you really miss those chaotic nights hanging out with your best friends, this is definitely a way to recapture some of that energy!
Winter break is normally a time when I get together with friends from home, but that’s not going to be the same this year, for a lot of reasons (some of them are graduating!). But by incorporating these into our friendships, we get that same feeling of hanging out with each other, and it’s as safe as possible. Plus, it’s good practice for when we all inevitably finish college and don’t live within minutes of each other. Hopefully you’ll have fun with these ideas too!