I still remember the last day of school. The laughter mingled with tears, the happiness of entering into a new phase of life combined with the sadness of leaving the place we have known as our second home for years. I remember the promises we all made, that we would keep in touch no matter what. However, as my graduation is nearing its end, I have realised that except for a very few people, everyone else has faded into just faces in my memories or numbers in my phone book and probably school friendships do change when we get into college.
“We all face this situation on joining college, entering into new friendships while trying to keep the old ones as strong as before. There is a rare category of school friends with whom we can’t spend a day without talking no matter how far we are from each other and then there are some who don’t even care to say hello even if they live across the street.”
There are some friends with whom we don’t talk for months, but when we do, it feels like nothing has changed. But there are also some whom we try to keep in touch with regularly but they are too caught up in their new life that they don’t have time to pay attention to us. There are people who used to be just classmates and are now our close friends and there are those who were once our closest friends and are now just classmates.
We all made promises to our school friends that we would meet regularly. But what really happens? Every time we ask them about going out on a weekend, they already have something planned out with their college friends and every time they ask us the situation is the same. Though we do meet occasionally, we don’t meet up as much as we promised we would.
“Time changes everything and also shows us our worth in other people’s life and their worth in ours. The BIG group of friends that we once had has now shrinked to a small group of just two or three people. It is important to realise that these few people are perhaps the best gift that our school life has given us and that they need to be treasured.”
Keeping friendships was easy in school as we used to meet each other every day but as we lose ourselves in our college life- as we get busy doing assignments, preparing for tests, taking part in society events and various other things; we forget to give some time to our school friends.
It is very hard to find good friends and it is even harder to keep them in this busy life. But a two minute conversation en route to home or even a small WhatsApp message can do wonders in maintaining a friendship. Sometimes, it is not about how much time we spend with our school friends but making the most of the little time we get in each other’s company.
Friendships get complicated because our lives are complicated but no matter how messed up life gets, never let go of your friends because friendship is perhaps the purest and most selfless relations of all.
Read: College Vs School: Who Wins?
– Urvashi (Editorial, University Times)
