The transition from high school to college is a significant change for most everyone. It is a time that will make you feel quite nervous, yet incredibly excited for the new endeavors that are in your future. However, the most difficult part of heading to college for a lot of incoming students is leaving your old friends behind.
The friends you had in high school are the ones who you think will be around forever. These are the people you’ve known since elementary school—the people you grew up with. You all went through your awkward phases together, attended Friday night football games, had sleepovers, fought over pointless drama that seemed like the end of the world at the time. You talked behind each other’s backs no matter how much you denied it, and had an unwavering amount of inside jokes that only you and your clique could possibly understand.
Saying goodbye to all of this is not easy. Personally, I was terrified when I first arrived at Juniata. I felt like I didn’t know how to make friends because I never had to. I had the same friends since I was a kid. What did I know about making new ones? At first, the idea of having to do this made me miss my friends back home even more. But, I soon realized that the opportunity to start fresh and make some new friends wasn’t so bad after all.
Once I settled in and became more acquainted with my new surroundings, I started to branch out and come out of my shell more. I started visiting the girls who lived right across the hall from me, I was getting involved in campus activities, and I started finding my place at Juniata that I wasn’t confident I was going to be able to find. Before I knew it, I became friends with a great group of girls who changed my life for the long run.
Your friends in college are so different from your friends in high school. You could always act or look a certain way in front of your friends from high school. You could hide parts of your life and yourself from them because you had a life at school, and then a life at home. In college, your life at school and your life at home are basically morphed into one. There is no hiding anything from anyone. Your college friends see you at your absolute best and your absolute worst. They see you fail and succeed, cry and laugh. They see all the little embarrassing things you do that you never thought anyone would see. The moment you realize you are comfortable with them seeing all of this and being able to laugh about it with them is the moment you’ll understand that you’ve found your best friends for life.
In college a new level of maturity begins to instinctively arise within each student. You realize that your college friends truly have your back and support you no matter what. The more you cling on to the memories with your childhood friends, the less memories you are going to create with your new friends. There is no reason to choose between each set of friends, but it is always important to remain open to the prospect of meeting new people.
Please take away this: The people you meet in college really do change your life forever.