This time of year, college students are bombarded with information about moving away from home and leaving their families. But honestly, I believe that saying goodbye to friends is much harder than saying goodbye to relatives. This is because it is scarier.

College is a transformative experience, but coming home to family, all will be as it ever was. Your relationships with family members may change due to geography or time, but they’re still your family and that’s never going to change. They will always be there, and no matter how many changes you go through once you leave home, your family will remain a constant in your life.

Friends change. You may return from college on a break or for the summer and come to realize that for months you haven’t spoken to the people you used to spend every day with. And if they were also away at school, chances are they’ve changed too. It’s terrifying to think that someone you spent your childhood with could become a total stranger so easily.

Saying goodbye to friends before going to college is much harder because you do not know if you’ll be coming back to the same person. For that matter, you don’t know if you’ll be the same person coming back home. You and your hometown friends will meet new people, have separate experiences, and begin to build your lives independently. You and your friends become adults, with new and different perspectives and priorities that may not align with one another anymore if you decide to reconnect.

Some friendships last a lifetime, but most come and go. When saying your final farewell to friends, you may very well be saying goodbye to that version of the person you knew for the last time. It is absolutely terrifying to think that you and the person standing before you today may never be the same again. Therefore, saying goodbye to friends is harder than saying goodbye to relatives, because it might actually be forever.