Friends are great. It’s an interesting concept as two people who have never met agree they both enjoy each other’s company and then boom. They’re friends. As you get older, and by that I mean when you are not forced to occupy a classroom with more than 20 of your peers for eight hours a day or share a bathroom with the 100 people on your dorm floor, it becomes a lot harder to make them. With that being said, the way we make friends changes too.
I have a few friends I have known since elementary school and these people are wonderful people. We have seen each other through the minefield otherwise known as middle school and even chose to be friends through that equally explosive though slightly more tolerable high school. Once college rolled around, we had to put in a lot more effort to see each other and this honestly strengthened many of my friendships in ways I didn’t think possible.
What I love about my childhood friends is that they have really seen it all. When you have known someone for half of your life, you can really, truly be yourself around them with no fear of judgment. Their homes feel like your homes and their families feel more like your family.
While in college, making friends was an entirely new experience. There were the people who lived on your floor freshman year. We hung out more so due to proximity than due to the fact that we had anything in common, but they were a great place to start. Sometimes you have friends who just get you through a certain time period in your life, and then you go your separate ways. Once I joined groups at school and started seeing the same people in all my classes, I formed friendships with people I actually had common interests with.
These were the people who I bonded with over late night study sessions and who I saw most days in class. College is an interesting place to make friends as you all live within walking distance of each other and though you are there to get an education, being social is just as important. It’s not really that I have missed college itself this past year and a half, but more so that I miss having all my friends in one place.
Post-college, making friends is strange. You either get along with the people you work with, or you don’t. You can learn to tolerate your coworkers, and a few may stand out as potential friends. But there is a fine line between getting a drink with your coworkers after work and getting wasted and complaining about your ex to the person who shares your workspace. I think what is important after college is to not only look for friends in the workplace, but to also seek friends in new places. There are tons of options as simple as joining a running club or finding a book club. There, you will be surrounded by like-minded people and the environment is less forced.
What can be so crazy is that my college and post college friends are just as close and important to me as the friends I have known for half my life. The friends I have made throughout my life are incredibly important as they all supported me and were there for me at different times in my life. I’ve learned in the past few years that just because I met someone a few months back, doesn’t mean we can’t connect on a level that seems like we’ve know each other for years. There is no time frame in which you have to measure a true friendship.
