Working with students during this (sometimes) stressful time is very interesting. You see all of the emotions. From elation to being done with school, to indifference, to complete sadness about their college experience being over.
Putting the job market aside, one of the biggest things on some of my students minds is leaving their friends, whom they have gotten so close to, behind. Worrying that they'll never see some of these people ever again. And the truth of the matter is...they won't see some of these people again.
It's funny how the older you get, the more your views on friendship evolve and change.
I was walking past our campus daycare center today and all of the kids were out playing on the playground. When you're that young, you are completely indiscriminate about who your friends are. You don't care about their background, race, ethnicity, status...anything. Everybody just runs around together and has fun, not a care in the world. At this age, I don't think we really have a concept of friendship because we are friends with everyone.
I think that attitude pretty much continues through most of elementary school, except the difference is, you start to get closer with certain people more than others. You have started to form actual bonds of friendship.
Then there's middle school. Blech...middle school. Hormones raging, middle school is when the "cool" factor kicks in. You may select your friends based on what kind of social status that may afford you. You know what I'm talking about. Don't be seen hanging out with so-and-so...that's social suicide!
Depending on how fast you mature, High school can have much of the same attitude. For me, however, I realized the type of people that I wanted to hang out with and the type I didn't. I started to have a really tight group of friends.
And then, for some, there's college. College is an amazing experience as far as social life goes. You are surrounded by people that come from all over the place and, maybe for the first time in your life, are confronted with the reality of a global society. People from every different religion, political views, ethnicity, race, sexuality...there is a wealth of diversity. You can also start with a completely clean slate in college. For many, there aren't a lot of people that they know at their university or college. A chance to be the you you WANT to be. Were MEANT to be.
Anywho...As I was saying, the progression of what friendship is and how important it is to you evolves the older you get. There has been more than one occasion in the last decade that I really thought about my group of friends and what they were adding to my life. And I think that that is a really important question to ask yourself. Friendships, just like any relationship, are give and take. Push and pull. Constantly trying to find a balance. But if you can honestly say that a friendship is not adding anything positive to your life and it seems much more like it's all take and no give from the other person...it may be time to re-evaluate whether or not that person needs to be in your life.
The other thing you realize when you grow older is that you don't have to see or talk to your friends every day to have a meaningful friendship. I think this is a really important thing for college graduates to remember. You're going from four years of seeing all of your favorites as often and for as long as you want to and transitioning to a friendship where you'll actually have to work to stay in touch and keep the relationship going. This is quite scary for some folks. But my message to all of my students, and one that I had to learn myself growing up was...Life will get in the way. It's just a fact. You will have your life to live and your friends will have theirs. People will get into romances, fall out of romances, have kids, get married, get a promotion, move across the country. Life will happen. You will fall out of touch with people whom you hold very dear to you and never want to lose touch with. You will not be able to call ALL of your college friends all the time. And that's ok. It's those friendships where you may not talk or see each other for months or sometimes even years but when you do...it's like you talked yesterday that really matter. People will always come into and go out of your life...it's just the nature of things. Some friendships will wane only to be reignited at a later time. Some will be lost forever. Some friendships will flourish no matter what happens in either of your lives.
As I'm sure you have noticed throughout these posts, I hold many friendships near and dear to my heart. Some of my closest friends and I will only talk maybe once or twice a year...but we're still connected by a bond that has survived the test of time. Some of my friends and I talk two or three times a week on average and the same is true. Basically...life is like this:
I don't know if this was coherent at all...but there you have it.
BYEEEEEE!
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