As I start my second year of college, I have started to see both the good and bad differences between college friendships and high school friendships. These differences can one hundred percent cause issues for the other type of friendship if you view them in the way. I am slowly but surely figuring out how to navigate between the two.
I went to a super small school (graduating class of 31). I knew everyone and everything about them and they knew the same about me. When looking at colleges, I wanted a change. I decided to go out of state for college, giving myself a new type of people. I quickly learned that friendships, whether you stay close to home or move far away, are very different from high school to college.
The main difference is you get to pick what you share with your newfound friends. You can be as open, or as closed off, as you want to be. Even though this isn't the way to build the strongest friendships, you get to decide what is shared, when it is told, and with whom it is shared. If you do share, it helps build trust in the friendship because it shows that you want the other person to know you.
Another difference is that college friends seem to understand a busy schedule more than your high school friends (usually). You're going through college with your college friends so if a class is stressing you out and you're spending a majority of your time studying, your friends at college will be more understanding than ones who you use to hang out with on the daily basis at home. While it is a completely understandable stance, it is something that is hard to get used to.
Being away from your high school friends can also cause issues within the friendship; you both find other people to hang out with while the other one is away. With college friendships, you both know that you have your home friends and your college friends. You also both realize that when you're back on campus you two will hang out as soon as possible. However, some high school friendships can be strained by the division of friendship.
Once you graduate high school, you start to grow up a lot. You change as a person (especially in college) and the same is happening with all of your friends. Through this, you can change to build stronger friendships or it can force the two of you apart. While this can be a rough time (moving on from being close friends with someone to not seeing them but maybe once, or twice, a year) it is something that helps you grow as a person. We all want those friendships that we plan on living next to them every day of our lives, but it is really not practical. Things and people do change no matter how hard we try to keep them the same.
