When Friendship Goes International – And You Don’t

As I feel the final month of summer inching towards me, I have been forced into cramming everything I wish I did all summer into one last month.

By CC Staff

While this makes for lots of late nights and some memorable moments with my favorite girls from home, I often find myself missing my friends from college. If this were last summer, my longing wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Unfortunately, my friends and I are approaching our junior year of college, a year plagued by the ever-so-popular study abroad program.

Whether it be Italy, Nicaragua, China, or South Africa, a semester abroad is a semester of discovery and growth. Some countries have limited access to computers and telephones, making communication difficult.

Students bond with other students from all over the world through funny situations involving language barriers and unusual traditions in their temporary homes.

While it sounds liberating to be separated from everything and everyone that you know, I’m personally not ready to disappear from my life for six months. I’d rather commit myself to a grueling internship that will cement my position at a company after I graduate. I always feel as if I’m missing something important if I venture too far from my home territory for too long. Unfortunately for me, the majority of my close friends from college are anxious to do exactly that.

Half of the girls I have been living with since freshman year are currently preparing to jet across the sea to a multitude of countries that I cannot afford to visit. Many of their departures are scheduled in two weeks or less. If they are not skipping out on fall semester, they’ll be gone after winter break, when the sun comes out and daily trips to Central Park are a must.

I’m excited that my friends will have the opportunity to build life experience and live out an opportunity that they’ve been dreaming of since freshman year. At the same time, I’m terrified of being left behind. I fear that my friends will become cultured and worldly without me, that they’ll make stronger friendships than the ones that we have.

It may be selfish, but I’m heartbroken that some of my closest friends from college are going to miss my 21st birthday. They’ll be gone during spring break and through all of the weekends that we make so special through our rampages. While my closest friends are gone, I’ll have no one to cry to when my boyfriend and I are fighting or when I get rejected from that job I really wanted.

Although the reality of the situation has not completely hit me yet, I’m sure that I will be plagued by an overwhelming sense of loneliness when I step on to campus and realize that half of my friends are not moving in on that day, or any other.

Despite all my whining, I think the experience may be positive if I can get past the fact that I may need to extend myself to some new people. With the majority of my friends temporarily out of the picture, I’ll have time to focus on my school work and on that killer internship that I just interviewed for last week (If I get it- cross your fingers!). I’ll probably save tons of money since I won’t be going out as much, and shopping by myself usually yields less purchases. Who knows? I could even force myself to be semi-outgoing and make some new friends- but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.