Staying in Touch While at University

Be understanding
University will be a new and difficult test of your friendships. Firstly, what you need to accept is that both you and your best friends are starting your adult lives. You’ll both need time to settle into your new scenes, not to mention the workload you’ll be buried under so don’t suffocate them! Not seeing each other every day as you did at school is part of this new life, that is until you both resign yourselves to moving back in with your parents in your hometown.

Use different forms of media to communicate
Losing regular contact with someone can go two ways. Either they begin to miss your presence in their lives or they start forgetting about you. Try and use different forms of media to maintain the closeness of your relationships. You could even write a letter and post it (through the mail and not on their Facebook wall), it’s a lot more personal and shows you’re still making an effort.

Organisation
It is a good idea to be more organised in making trips to see each other or meeting up when you’re back for the holidays. This isn’t something you previously would’ve had to do with the convenience of school but you’re fully grown adults (painful to accept I know), staying within a five-mile radius of all your childhood friends is a pipe-dream I’m afraid. You can also try to plan visits to each other’s universities if possible, but for your friend’s credibility at their uni, keep the humiliating stories about them to a minimum.

Gaining perspective
You may have already shared some of the most intimate information about yourself during an emotional night at fresher’s, but the friends you grew up with are a part of who you are. Don’t be upset if they don’t message you every day, you both have flourishing friendships to occupy yourselves with, as long as you’re still the first contact when disaster comes knocking (which it usually does at university in some form) then you’re both important people in each other’s lives.

You can’t replace your childhood friends and especially the memories you’ve made with them. University doesn’t have to end hometown friendships, in fact, it can often strengthen them.