One of the reasons most people don’t enjoy life after college at first, is because they are separated from their friends. While some people are lucky and move in with their friends right after graduation, the majority of people do not get that lucky! Most people move home, away from their friends, or move to a new city where they know no one! It’s isolating being surrounded by your friends, basically 24/7, to having none of them. Just because they might be far, doesn’t mean it’s the end of your friendship! This is the reality of what having friends after college is like, and how to maintain your long distance friendships.
The Reality of Having Friends After College – It’s Difficult AF
Take a close look at what your friends are like during college. Are they easy to plan with? Are they always busy and difficult to find time with? Planning to hang out will be about the same, but with the added difficulty of living in different places.
I have two specific friends that I love to death, but they were not the easiest to see and plan with even while in college. Since graduation in May of 2023, I have seen them twice. Once the summer after graduation, once December of 2023. My BFF who is great at planning and super on top of making plans like me, I see at least once a month. Two of my favorite sorority sisters that are a year older than me, I was worried I would fall out of contact with. While we don’t see each other super often, we keep in touch. Having relationships with your friends after college will look different with each friend for each person.
If you go to school out of state, like I did, it’s a whole other ball game! Seeing friends is limited by your schedules, and the distance. My BFF who I see often lives an hour away from me. The rest live at least 2.5 away. I went to Penn State and I live in CT. Prepare yourself for the reality of what your friendship will look like! And while you won’t see each other all the time, you can still make each other laugh and support each other from afar, or in a different way.
The Brutal Truth
Life without living with or near your BFFs is why life after college sucks. You have to learn to be by yourself and enjoy your own presence (which I write more about how to be your own BFF here). You have to adjust to a new stage of life, which you have already done before recently. Remember after high school graduation, how some friends stayed a part of your life, while others disappeared? The same thing will happen to your friends after college. Not all of them! But unfortunately some. This filtering doesn’t have anything to do with you, unless you aren’t putting in enough effort personally, but just is a natural part of life. To ensure you’re doing your part to keep your friendship alive, make a plan while you’re still together at college. Or, if you’ve graduated, you can still make a plan with your friends too.
Make a Plan While You’re Together
The best way to keep in contact with your friends after college is to create a plan of how you’re going to continue to talk or communicate. I’ve seen lots of people send weekly updates every Friday in the group chat. Or maybe there’s a weekly recurring FaceTime or phone call to catch up. I personally love to send my friends random voice memos about everything that’s happened recently. Some people use apps like Locket to send photos to your friends everyday and with the widget on your home screen or the app, Cappuccino, to send funny stories and voice memos that turn into podcasts.
Sit your friends down and decide the best way to consistently keep in contact. Set a reminder or start a joint google calendar to keep track.
If you are still in college, remember that life first got enjoyable because you did some combination of making friends, getting involved, or joining a community. Life after college is the same! Just that a university isn’t organizing it for you. I write more about how to make post grad life suck less here if you’re interested.
Plan Your Next Hang Out While Hanging Out
The arguably worst part of a long distance friendship is when you are leaving after hanging out, not sure when you’ll see them again. One of the key tips to keeping a strong relationship with your friends after college is always planning the next time you’ll see each other. Even just having an idea of, oh we’ll go back for a game next fall together, or we’ll meet up in this city on a Saturday next month, will make you feel 10000 times better.
When things aren’t up in the air, you know there’s a next time coming soon that you can look forward to.
A great first hang out after graduation can be related to coming back to school! At Penn State, we have a weekend in July called Arts Fest, where art vendors from all over come and sell their world. The downtown gets decorated and everyone comes back to party and reconnect. If your school does something similar, this is a great option! Or a classic is coming back to watch a football game together.
If you are living decently close together, you can plan weekend trips in the middle of where you live. Some of my friends live in Pennsylvania, so we sometimes meet in NYC as a middle point between us. I joined my cousin and her college best friend to go to Salem for a day trip together. Thankfully, day trips don’t take too much planning, just coordinating days off and what you want to do! If you live farther apart and need to book hotels or flights to see each other, it gets more complicated.
Surprise Each Other!
If you can’t always physically be with your friends, you need to still be present and aware of what’s going on in their life. Is your bff about to graduate from grad school? Maybe you can send flowers to their house. If they’re going through a rough time, you could write them a letter and mail it to them. Or even better, make a care package and mail that too!
Is their birthday coming up? Can you coordinate with their siblings to surprise them? Or if you can’t be there in person, you could send them an Uber Eats gift card for them to get lunch on you! If you know them super well, you could even order their favorite thing to eat to be delivered to them.
When you don’t have access to the same quality time or constant communication, it’s hard to feel as close to your friends as you once were. While you’ll never see each other quite as often as during college, that doesn’t mean your friendship has to completely change. As long as you and your friends both put in the effort to make each other some level of a priority, then you will always have each other!
Final Thoughts
Will it be difficult maintaining friends after college, yes. But ultimately, the ones you do come out the other side with will probably be in your life forever! That, combined with the fact that you now only have to interact with people of your choosing from college, can be a relief. Besides at work, during life after college you have the most amount of control over who you allow into your life. You have the space and freedom to make your life whatever you want it to be. While you don’t need to know exactly what you want in life, you can plan big goals and fun activities to create your dream life after college.
For me, it’s a bit freeing to know that! With the end of college meaning everything, the next 40+ years of your life are all blank monthly calendars waiting for you to fill, it gives me peace knowing for sure the people that will be there with me.
