College Friendships Are Forever

By Stefanie Schmude on May 3, 2016

With graduation growing closer and closer, many of us are starting to think about where we are going to live, work and pretty much survive life in the real world. But are we thinking about what will become of our college friendships we’ve made the past four years?

You are probably thinking that you have nothing to worry about in that department. The friends you’ve made in college will be with you your entire life. Or will they? Think about it, after college we move, form careers, build families — when will we have time to hang out with friends?

Glenn Sparks, a professor at Purdue University, conducted a 19 year study on college friendships. He followed 32 pairs of same sex friendships and 13 pairs of male-female friendships from their graduation year in 1983 to 2002. He found that distance, careers, relationship statuses and children, although still lasting after 19 years, affected all of the friendships.

The average distance between the pairs of friends turned out to be over 800 miles, but what kept their friendship in tact was the fact that they would stay in touch over the phone. When something good or bad would happen they would call their close friends and talk about it.

There was no social media sites or other forms of technology to aid them in the years of keeping in touch. Sparks believes that this new generation of social media is what is hurting friendships just as much as we think it is keeping them together.

“Technology offers great capabilities to keep in touch with people, but it can also keep us from getting to really know someone.”

We have fallen into this habit of checking Facebook or Twitter to keep updated on our friends’ lives, but are we really asking them how their life is, or how they are doing? We assume because we see them post pictures of their vacation to Maui on Facebook that it was a great time. But, in reality, it could have been the worst vacation ever with food poisoning or horrible sunburns.

We are observing but not engaging.

So how do we fix this problem and ensure that we are maintaining that close friendship with the individuals we’ve connected with in college?

Make time for each other.

After graduation it is important that even when you start your jobs or internships to make time to spend together. Schedule a “date night” for you and your friends. That could be either going to the movies, going out to dinner and drinks, or staying in for a classic game night. Whatever it is, make sure to schedule at least one night a week to do something together to maintain that face-to-face connection.

Make each other part of the family.

By this I mean make your close friends like a second family. When forming a family of your own starts to come into play, make sure that you designate your close friends as the “unrelated aunt or uncle.” I like to think of this stage as the show Friends. When Chandler and Monica had their twins, the rest of the crew became their aunts and uncles because they were so close they were practically family anyways.

Stay away from the social media sympathy.

I see this all the time on my newsfeed: people will post statuses that are almost like grabbing for sympathy from their friends, and they get it. But they get it from people who are not their close friends, because their close friends are the ones who are calling them or going over to their house to talk about it in person. Once you become the friend on Facebook that gives advice to sympathy grabbing statuses then you are not a close friend. Call your friend up or send them a text to see if you can come over and the friendship will remain strong.

Communication is key in long distance friendships.

If the time comes where you and your best friend from college have to move away from each other for career purposes, make sure you stay in contact by phone, email, paper letters, carrier pigeons, and the like. Social media is great when it comes to see what the other one is getting up to, but nothing beats the close connection that a phone call gives you. Call them up once or twice a week for a nice catch-up conversation. No, you’re not getting the social aspect of hanging out together, but you are still staying in contact and that is enough to keep you until the next time you reunite.

They say that lasting friendships are formed between the ages of 15 and 25, so keep the ones that you have now in college close as you move on to the adult world.

“Making friends is like managing a bank account. You have to make investments.” – Glenn Sparks.

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