I’ve read online and heard stories about people feeling lonely after college, and that it’s much harder to make friends as an adult since you’re working instead of being in a very social environment like a college. I can’t help but worry that if I don’t end up living near my college / pick one in a location where I wouldn’t want to or plan on staying after graduation, I would have to go through a big transition as an adult: saying goodbye to all my friends (more than if I lived near campus), be lonely, and wonder if I would be happier in life otherwise (at least during the first few years after graduating, and I know lots of college graduates have to deal with this but still).
I don’t wanna hear explanations, but your stories. Whether or not I choose to live near my college after graduation, adult life would definitely be different, and friends I would make in college would move away and things may not be the same. So what are your thoughts?
Go to college and worry about what happens after college once you graduate. There is no point in playing at crystal ball gazing.
As a woman who graduated college back in the day, and the parent of a recent college grad (2020) there is literally no way to predict where you or your friends will be once you graduate. When I graduated from my college near home, I left six months later and never came back to live in my home state. In fact, I moved to the opposite coast.
We never foresaw a pandemic. My grad should have been living in another state just a few months after graduation. Her priorities changed with Covid, she’s been working remotely from home and saving money. She will be moving out in a few months for good. Of all her high school friends, only one still lives nearby. All the others moved away for work. She would have never stayed in the state where her college was, and neither would her friends, who literally came from everywhere from Hawaii, to Washington state, to Florida.
You’re going to grow up a lot between now and when you graduate college. Just go where you think you will succeed and let life happen.
All of my college friends moved away from the town the school was in, myself included. In my broader friend group, I only know one person who lives even semi close to where they went to school but their close college friends live across the country.
I think you will find that as you move on from college there are plenty of other opportunities to meet new people and make friends - through work, your community, faith group, meet up groups for shared interests, etc…
I live in the same town I went to college in, but there is literally no one I know from my time at college here. I do have friends who went to the same college who live in town, but we did not know each other while we were in college.
You are overthinking. You might strike up a friendship at college and then move somewhere else with a friend after college, like both go to NYC together or something. Or you might get a great job in another city and make friends at work. Lots and lots of people make friends at work. That’s where I met my husband.
Don’t worry about this. Just go to college and work hard and have fun and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.
I’ve stayed in touch with a number of my high school friends but few of my college friends. I think its because I had so much longer with my HS friends and they were a bigger part of my life when I was socializing with them. The friends I made in college freshman year were usually not the same I had by my senior year. I still kept in touch with some but we aren’t the friends my HS friends are.
You logic is based on a mistaken assumption: that most of your friend group would stay near college. That’s a pretty risky assumption- especially as you don’t even know who that friend group will be! Your closest friends may all be from elsewhere, with no plan to stay in that town. Also, depending on your field, your early jobs are likely to have quite a few other recent grads. The thing about being harder to move as an adult waxes and wanes at different stages of adulthood, but for brand new grads it’s generally less of a problem- b/c everybody else is doing the same thing. But, you asked for examples, so here is what I have seen from those of our lot who have come out the other side:
Collegekid1: nearly all of her core friend group moved to the same big city. Almost immediately the friend group expanded to include new friends from work and friends of friends who had gone to other colleges and now moved to the same city.
Collegekid2: went straight on to grad school, in a completely different region, started from scratch (but in a uni).
Collegekid3: got a great job in a city that was good for her field, but where she didn’t know anybody. A little homework helped her find the part of town with lots of new grads like her. Tons of people in their 20’s- and lots of businesses catering to them. She moved into an apartment with a friend of a friend and had a thriving social life straight out of the gate (she is by nature average socialyl- not the extrovert that #1 is, but not an introvert like #2).
You’re assuming that you’re going to have a big group of friends that are going to stay together, for life, in the same city, and that nothing will change after graduation. My large group of college friends actually had career and academic goals. We all wanted to succeed in what we had studied.
Life happens and it is not “Friends” -the TV show. You have no way of knowing what will happen. Your previous posts seem to really stress the need to want to party and to be social. People who party often don’t seem to achieve a lot of academic, career nor financial goals.
Everything and everyone changes. People mature and have personal goals. Everything is affected by:
Careers,
Graduate school,
significant others,
Family needs,
serious Illness,
and yes, death.
I stayed in town purposely. There was a possibility of me moving because my husband was contemplating jobs in other cities. You can’t control now what your friends in college will do after graduation. Everyone moves to follow careers, housing needs, and significant others.
Everyone starts to have children, or have families.
Your very good friends become:
the neighbors who live on your block,
your coworkers (who are awesome people),
your bosses ( my bosses have always been fantastic people),
your volunteering buddies,
The parents of your children’s classmates and teammates ( some of these people have been my best friends for the past 20 years!)
Acquaintances from everywhere through family parties, weddings, church events.
Life is what you make it. The reason I went to college was because I wanted a career in a very specific field. I didn’t go to college to hang out and party.
If all you want to do is party, and hang out together with friends after graduation, then you’re looking at a lot of trips to rehab. Employers don’t want to hire immature, irresponsible, and unprepared employees, no matter how “social” you are.
To answer your original question, my college friends and I met occasionally, and tried to get together, but not everyone could meet at the same time because everyone had lives and had moved out of the city or out of the country. We communicate by emails or social media.
I see my high school friends more frequently through reunions.
Edited to add: It would be really nice if you could keep the titles to your posts a little bit shorter than paragraphs.
This is a great question and I love some of these responses. I"ll share my experience. I went to University of Michigan for undergrad. I ended up staying and living/working in Ann Arbor for another 8 years. My friends all graduated and moved to cities like San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, Denver,Boston back to the Detroit area. A few stayed in the area or came back for graduate school. Ann Arbor is a vibrant city as well as a college town. I started to know the part of Ann Arbor that isn’t the University although they are closely entwined. I loved the community, the restaurants, culture etc. I DID feel very lonely as a young adult and then a young professional single adult. It seemed like everyone who moved there for work or school was married (it is the Midwest and it was the 90s). It was hard for me to meet people like myself. I ended up reconnecting with my now husband when he came to the law school to interview students for his law firm in NYC. I live in NYC now. Looking back, I loved Ann Arbor, but I stayed because I was afraid to leave after being so happy there during college. I wish I had moved and given that a try during that time. You will have college friends heading to all different places and it can be fun to move together. I had groups of friends that moved to various cities together. Fwiw, I have a lot of friends from high school, college and now and geography hasn’t faded our friendships. We may have grown apart at times but then we reconnect and enter a new chapter of our friendship. I love that my college roommates and I all have seniors applying to college right now. We have a group text going about the Orange Bowl but a few mentions about colelge too. It’s great to share this with them. My advice is dont’ make decisions from a place of fear and what ifs. Try to figure out what your dream is and go for it!
DD’17 stayed in her college town an hour away from home. She lives with one of her college suitemates, and has two other college friends she sees regularly. And another friend from the job she had during school. However, she just went to community college, so it was more likely her classmates would stay in the area.
She’s very happy to have her roommate and not have to start alone somewhere new. But she could have if she had to. DD’19 has no plans to stay in her college town. She might start out near her sister. And if she’s lucky, her BFF from college will go to the same area but it’s all dependent on where the jobs are.
Funnily enough I have several friends- and more recently some of the Collegekids as well - who have had this exact experience in Ann Arbor- more than any other college town/city that I can think of except possibly NYC.
I stayed in town after graduation, and am still here. Exactly one of my friends also stayed in town for an extended period of time after graduating.
I met people at work, built friendships and networks, etc. I don’t think it’s much different from what my older daughter is now going through, having moved 600 miles away.
You’ve received some excellent advice on this thread with respect to friends moving and the social aspects of life.
One thing to consider is that companies often recruit at colleges near them. Thus, many colleges have the strongest career offerings in relatively close proximity to them (certainly the same state/region). So if there is a certain area where you’d like to live after college, you may want to consider colleges near that location. But with good internships and applications, it is definitely possible to get a job in a different area of the country from which you graduated from college. It might be a little tougher, but by no means impossible.