In high school, a lot of people feel they have met their “forever” friends. Growing up with each other and seeing each other at every stage of life, these friendships felt deep. And then suddenly, after coming to college, your friendships took on another level.
Suddenly, friendships feel a lot bigger, and you become closer to people faster. If your college friendships feel more intense than anything you’ve experienced prior, this isn’t dramatic; you’re just growing. It is all a part of the process.
To start, you’re meeting these new people in a season of reinvention. In high school, the version of ourselves was shaped by everything we had grown up around. Our family, friends and the community of people who had known us for years.
Whether you realized it or not, you were immensely shaped by old notions and reputations that played a huge role in your identity. However, college is different. It is a fresh start, and the first time you are asked to truly discover who you are.
No one knows any past phases or an awkward era…it is completely up to you to decide who you want to be. When you meet someone in this stage of reinvention, you aren’t bonding over proximity but in finding your identity together.
It is the first time you’re living life side-by-side with all of your friends. You’re not just seeing each other on the weekend or for a study date after school; you are experiencing life together. The mundane experiences like laundry or grabbing food are now experiences you share with your friends.
When you’re experiencing adulthood for the first time, the people besides you aren’t just your friends; they become your family. This type of proximity accelerates closeness.
Your friends become your emotional anchors, and we start to understand our relationships differently. We aren’t 16 anymore, and the relationships and people in our lives become more mature because we need to be there for each other in different ways.
You recognize who drains you, who shows up, who supports your growth and who brings out the best version of yourself. You’re not just settling with friends, you’re choosing your friends.
This isn’t high school, where your pool of people is limited; in college, you’re surrounded by thousands of different people, making the friendship more meaningful because you are choosing each other. When tight friendships are formed, it isn’t from convenience its compatibility.
I know personally, after knowing my friends for only a few weeks, I felt like I had known them forever. My roommate and I talk all the time about how we feel like we have been friends since childhood due to the amount we know about each other.
This is all due to the fact that we spend so much time with our friends. It becomes more of a familial bond when those are the people you depend on for everything. They become your support system and home away from home.
My friends are the people I go to for advice, and they are such a huge support system for me. College is four years of self-discovery and major milestones. It is such a pivotal time that you get to experience with your friends right by your side. That is what makes college connections unlike any other.
College teaches you more about yourself than you ever thought possible. I’ve learned so much about my attachment style, my communication habits and what I value in my friendships just from the first few short months of being here.
College friendships feel intense because they’re happening during one of the most transformative chapters of your life. You’re not just sharing memories, you’re sharing growth, uncertainty, heartbreak, ambition and late-night realizations about who you are and who you want to be.
They’re intense because they matter right now. Because they’re shaping you right now. Because for a moment in time, you’re building a life side by side with people who are just as unsure and hopeful as you are. And that kind of connection? It’s supposed to feel big.