I will become an official college graduate come May 3^rd, 2019. With this accomplishment has come a few challenges I wasn't quite prepared to face. Most of them center around the giant question mark that is the next year of my life, but there is one in particular that has been on my mind a lot lately.

Literally, every single person I am friends with (except for two or three) will graduate or will move out of the town we all went to college in. In 6 months' time, we will all be in different places, physically and mentally than we are right now. Some of us will start a grad program this summer. Some of us will move back home. Some of us will take a gap year. Some of us will move to a new city and start a fulltime job in their career field.

It's so weird to think about and makes me wonder who will still be friends at the end of this first post-college year. I wonder who I'll still be friends with at the end of this year. Will drama ensue and friendships end as a result of the pressure that distance and life changes tend to put on relationships?

I know some people don't worry about this sort of thing. Some people shrug it off knowing that they'll make new friends.

But I do worry about this sort of thing. And while new friends are always a good thing, I love my current friends. I found my people at ECU and I don't want to let them go or for us to grow apart as we get older. I don't want to become just another Facebook friend from college. And I don't want my friends to become that to me either.

It's scary to think about how 5 years down the road, I could no longer be friends with any of the people I associate with now. And while I know this is true even when you're not in this constant state of transition that we call "young adulthood," it's just crazy to imagine that these people who have seen me through failures, successes, and everything in between might suddenly just drop out of my life.

And I don't say this because I don't expect any of us to put in an effort to keep these friendships alive. I 100% know that all of us will try. But sometimes life happens. Sometimes people do grow apart. But I hope that we manage. I hope we see each other and keep in touch. I value the friendships I've made in college so much and can't imagine those people not being in my life.