With all the amazing thing summer has to offer, being away from your Oxford friends is more than a struggle.

But if you make the effort to keep in touch throughout the season of daylight and warm nights you'll have no problem reuniting in the fall.

1. A snap a day keeps the separation away. Social media gives us boundless opportunities to stay up to date with our friend's and their lives.  Being tagged in a #tbt or tweeted a link to "15 Weird Things Only Your Roommate Could Know" gives you those heartwarming butterflies that make you swoon over your sistas and it reminiscing about the time you split the last pizza stick and all the rest of Crosby temporarily hated you.  These are little things and they're so easy to do.  So take the two seconds to post that New Girl clip to your bestie's wall (remember, that's the thing on Facebook).    

2.  Get old school.  I don't care if it is a dying art, no one has ever looked in their p.o. box and thought, "Ew, I got a letter."  Letters are the best! Ok, yes you can't just push send, but it's not like you have to pull out the feather and ink.  Slip in a few forgotten about pictures or a random pack of the endangered Lisa Frank stickers.  Whether you go all out in a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sort of way or just take the time to write down your random thoughts and doodles, getting something tangible from someone you're missing means so much.

3. The phone. Duh, yes but try actually using it to call. You can actually lol together while deliriously watching The Kardashians on Netflix together.   

4. Get a group involved.  All praise the group text.  It's like a true piece of happiness on your phone.  At times it's almost like you never stopped hanging out on the couches of the tv room.  Also it gives you a fake sense of popularity when you abandon your phone for an hour and come back to find you have 38 new messages.  Sure they're about how George Clooney could have possibly gotten engaged but no one else has to know that.  Group text is sacred, use it.

5. Visit!  Sometimes as easy as it is to stay connected now, you need to actually be with your friends.  So make plans and get on a plane! Part of the reason you came to college was to fall in love with friends from different places.  You have places to stay in Chicago and California now, stop making excuses and go already.