High school friends are some of the best friends a person can have. Many reminisce the fun times of their “golden days” with the same pack of high school kids right next to them. All of the yearbook signatures and phone numbers scribbled everywhere mean something, right? Everyone has the pure intention to keep in touch with their friends after high school, but the reality is that life isn’t that simple.
Of course, this isn’t the case for some people. For those who decide to go to college, there’s a chance they could be spending the next four years with the same people. Sometimes, it does pan out that way. There are groups of high school friends who remain best friends in college and really only hang out with each other, just like in high school.
However, for the rest of us, this isn’t the case. Though Virginia Tech is a big university, there are several groups of friends from my high school who I still see hanging around on the Drillfield. I often see a familiar face every day, whether I acknowledge them or not.
The first semester away from your high school best friends isn’t all that bad — there’s Thanksgiving and the long winter break, which give you plenty of opportunities to hang out before life, jobs and everything else gets in the way.
We all make the promises to “visit as much as we can,” we promise to get lunch when we’re home, but we never do. In reality, there’s not that much time to visit or get lunch anymore.
Everyone takes on different jobs and has different schedules. There’s a large chance that the friends in a group will explore their own interests and the group will slowly splinter as the members grow apart. There’s a possibility that no one feels like they have anything in common anymore.
Sometimes, the most I will see from my high school friends is just scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. Staying connected on social media is one thing, but staying physically connected and making time to see each other is also something that gets pushed to the back burner after high school.
We may see long political rants, pictures of the high school couple that was “supposed to last” or a few SoundCloud links promoting that one guy’s rap career that was supposed to take off. Seeing a big announcement on social media will make us pleased but feel considerably disconnected.
Weekly calls or Skype sessions slowly morph into a text every once in a while to just “likes” on social media. It happens.
For some, this occurrence of moving on from high school best friends is heartbreaking. For others, it’s a blessing. There’s a significant percentage of people who can’t wait to move on from high school.
Even though we all make promises, the truth is that no one is obligated to keep in touch with their high school friends after they graduate. There may be a considerablete amount of guilt that stings for a awhile, but no one is obligated to stay connected with anyone. Leaving high school friends in high school does not make anyone a bad person or a bad friend.
Of course, everyone seems to have that special best friend from high school forever. It’s very possible to keep a small group of friends or maybe just one, but staying in touch with the whole soccer team or the entire drama department is highly unlikely and not very realistic.
Though it is usually never one’s intention to distance themselves from their high school friends, reality often takes charge of that fate. Life happens and friends come and go, just like in high school.
It is also important to remember that keeping old friends shouldn’t prevent anyone from making new ones. Making new friends in college doesn’t mean we have to ditch our old high school friends.
Eventually, distance, obligations and many other responsibilities will just make keeping in touch with high school friends more difficult. Some find peace in that and others do not, but high school doesn’t last forever for a reason.
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