Post College Adjustment #258: Keeping In Touch

Graduation is over. Your itchy and unflattering cap and gown are hung nicely in the back of your closet. You and your best friends huddle around your digital camera on the living room couch for the last time and look at pictures from graduation. You laugh and you cry (unless you are a guy, in which case you punch each other) as you reflect on all your great times together.

By Lauren

It is hard to imagine living without these awesome people.

But, you just might have to.

Everyone is now going in different directions and will soon be spread across the country starting their post college lives. Everyone will have new jobs, new friends and new people to take absurd selfies with (though this time during happy hour instead of at your house party). Sure, there is AIM, Facebook and free nights and weekends on your cell phone, but who is to say that these people won’t dump you the minute they hit the real world?

I am no Miss Cleo (a psychic who used to have commercials in the early nineties … maybe you remember her?), so I can’t tell you for sure what is coming in your future. I am, however, in your shoes and have learned quite a bit in the past 2 months.

1. Keeping in touch with friends from school is hard. Thanks to new technology – text-messaging, AIM, wireless internet, email and cell phones – keeping in touch with people has never been easier. Despite those helpful little ditties, finding the time to call all your old homies is difficult.

Between the working, paying bills, doing laundry and trying to navigate this thing we call life, there is little time in the day to call everyone you know and catch up on life.

2. But, it is not impossible. If your school friends are that important to you, you will find the time to keep them in your life. There is plenty of time when you are walking home from work, taking a lunch and laying around on a weekend to make a phone call. Even better, thanks to the joys of the internet, you can email or blog weekly updates to keep your friends in the loop. It may not be the most personal thing, but at least you are all aware of the daily occurrences in each other’s lives.

3. Don’t get too caught up in the past. It is understandable to hold onto your oldest friends. In fact, it would be completely rude to move away “tata!” from all those people who were there for you at your worst (i.e. slumped over the toilet bowl promising God you would never. drink. again.). But, if keeping in touch with your old friends has completely hindered your ability to make new friends, you may want to reconsider your actions. You want to hold onto these people – obviously – but you can’t let it get in the way of adjusting to your new life. You will need your old friends as you travel through life, but you also need the new ones who will be around for the daily grind.

4. Be patient. Just because you have some time to chat on the phone doesn’t mean your friends are always sitting by their phones waiting for you to call. They may be working late, away from their phones enjoying city life. You may go weeks without talking to a certain person, but that does not mean they have completely forgotten you. As soon as you finally do find him or her, you will realize that nothing has changed.

Ah. One less thing to worry about.

Next on the worry agenda: cleaning the tub. Fuck.