Everyone you know warns you that staying close to high school friends after graduation is difficult. When everyone moves away to different towns and states to go to college it becomes hard to stay in constant contact with your friends like you were still in high school. Obviously, your bonds will not be as tight as they were on graduation day but you can stay close to your friends post-graduation night.
(Cards my friends have sent me and cards I sent them)
The best thing you can do to stay close after graduation is to try to keep in contact with them at least a few times a month. My closest friends and I have both an iMessage and Snapchat group chat that we try and keep updated with our daily happenings. My favorite and now unconventional way of keeping in contact with my friends is sending a letter or card in the mail. Being away from home can get lonely and getting a nice little reminder that they are thinking about you in the mail is nice.
(Photo Courtesy of Pexels.com)
On top of texts and letters, we always try and catch up with a FaceTime or a phone call at least once a semester. College is very demanding for all of us so we try and cherish the time we have on FaceTime or on the phone.
(One of our many photo-shoots near the city)
My friends and I also try to spend as much quality time together as we can during the summer. Most of the time we decide to go on a photo-shoot somewhere in Lancaster City (where we are all from) or we find really pretty gardens to go to so we have Instagram worthy pictures to post all summer. But more often than not we tend to end up in a McDonald’s eating fries until we are ready to burst and just talking for hours on end about everything the other has missed during the school year.
(The Train Concert in Hershey, Pennsylvania)
My best friends and I have a tradition each year where we go to see at least one concert in the summer so we have one really fun memory that we can look back on each year. Generally, we try not to spend too much of our hard-earned money but every once in a while we tend to blow some on a concert ticket and McDonald’s.
(Just some of my printed pictures of my friends)
And to me, the most important thing I can do to stay close with my best girlfriends is very simple. I print pictures of us. I am someone who is very old fashioned and loves hard copies of photos. And I especially love to hang them up. This way I get to see all of my friends faces every day even though they are all back in Pennsylvania while I am here at Hofstra University.
(Mary and me at her Alpha Delta Pi “Date Party”)
I love my high school friends and staying this close with them during college has been extremely difficult. I have drifted away from many of the girls I was once very close to but I am glad I have been able to stay close to my closest friends. Staying close with anyone, especially when there is distance involved is hard, but with a little effort from everyone, it is not impossible! (And yes sometimes I will even drive 3 hours down to West Chester, Pennsylvania just to be my friend’s date to her Alpha Delta Pi “Date Party”… but considering we have been friends since kindergarten there’s really nothing I wouldn’t do for her at this point!)