My friend, Ginna at Ginnaandtonic.blogspot.com a friend from college sent me this 15 Things College Friends Teach Us from the thoughtcatalog and it almost brought tears to my eyes. All of these 15 points are so right on and it made me realize how blessed I am to still have such close college friends. Here is a bit of the article:
1. The people you befriend in a mad dash to find companionship during your freshman orientation may not be the people standing beside you in photos during senior week. But they will always be the first people who made you feel accepted and at home, and for that, you’ll always be grateful.
2. The best days are the ones you spend laying on some body of grass drinking/talking/”studying,” and the best nights are the ones when just a few of you stay up into the early hours of the morning drinking and talking. You cross lines of intimacy from which you will never entirely be able to return (but wouldn’t want to).
3. Sometimes you have to leave. For the weekend, for a semester, for good. The most important thing you will carry with you, after the confusion and uncertainty about leaving settles, are the friends who still call you and ask if you’ll come visit.
4. We all have that one friend who drinks too much, works too little, uses being “so busy and stressed” as an excuse for everything, and complains about all of it though their lives aren’t that bad or hectic. You do not want to be that friend.
5. Your way isn’t necessarily the right way. Your values can’t be applied to everyone/everything no matter how you try. You are the product of what your surroundings have cultivated you to be. And that’s not the way you have to carry on if you don’t want. This is what you learn when you live in close quarters with people who are from different states, countries, cultures, backgrounds, and it may be the most important lesson of them all.
6.Having a roommate who’s your best friend is, indeed, probably the best thing ever. But it’s not for everyone. You’d either never leave the room because you don’t want to hang out with anybody but each other or you just don’t want to screw up what’s already so good.
7. Your psyche will likely be shaken at one point or another. In the inevitable stress of college will come the time when all of your issues from the past rise and accumulate and you will be forced to finally deal with them head on. There are some friends who sit next to you and take care of you and there are some who dismiss you and walk away when hell and high water rises. These are the times in which it’s best to pay attention to who does what.
8. There are few greater joys than walking into a classroom, seeing one of your good friends and being like, YES *CLING.* Because group projects are bad enough as it is and they’ll let you peek at the textbook the night before required reading is due and you can text them and ask them all the questions you don’t want to look stupid by asking your professor.
9. Relationships come and go. Some come and linger. If you think you’re going to survive a heartbreak without friends who are ready to be selflessly giving but brutally honest with you, you are sorely mistaken my friend.
10. The people you appreciate most are the ones who eat lunch twice so you don’t have to do so alone, who offer up meal swipes when you’re in need, send you the assignment you lost the night before it’s due, tell you what setting to do your whites on, steal food from the dining hall when you’re sick, and who make you feel like you came to that school, at that time, for a reason, and they’re it.
Beauty in Everything 