College is supposed to be a time for change, where you become someone totally different from who you were before. It might seem like you should magically wake up one morning after starting college and have changed personality 180 degrees. When I first got to college, I felt that I wasn’t changing enough and was disappointed with myself because I thought I had gotten a chance to reinvent who I was, but I stayed very much the same person.
Looking back however, that wasn’t quite true. I did change a lot, I just didn’t realize it. And my friends had changed just as much as I had. Since my high school friends and I went to different colleges, and were in different majors, there wasn’t that much holding us together anymore.
Freshman year, I would call them sometimes, and we would end up talking for hours and hours, because we would have so much to catch up on. There were even times when I knew I shouldn’t talk to them because I would spend so much time talking that I wouldn’t get anything else done, and I knew I had a lot to do.
But once we all got back from our first year of college, I started to realize that there were a lot of things we didn’t understand about each other anymore. We all faced different environments from what we had known together, in high school, and been introduced to new ideas and concepts and our values had changed. I realized that we all had different values and the things that used to tie us together weren’t really enough anymore. We had changed into different people, but our relationships with each other hadn’t really changed with us.
Friendships change in college because you learn that it’s hard to be friends with someone who doesn’t share your values and ideals and who struggles to accept your different values. That doesn’t meant that you won’t be friends with people from high school anymore however.
For those people that were in your life from high school, who were your closest friends, you all need to find new ground on which to bond and support each other in whatever endeavors matter the most to you. Friendship isn’t just about the faces you see the most, but about cheering each other on, about supporting each other to achieve your goals, and finding the people who help you be the best person you can be. Once you find that place with your old high school friends, it won’t matter as much about the distances that have arisen as each of you change and develop on your own. What will matter the most is who contributes positively to your lives, and whether you can contribute positively for them in turn.
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