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Tell HN: People underestimate the effect of colleges in making lifelong friends

• mugivarra69 5y ago
  ppl dont know sh*t so thats that.
• aaron695 5y ago
• ben_w 5y ago
  I didn’t make connections of the sort you’re describing at university, instead I did so when I moved to Cambridge for my first job. I guess my university wasn’t nerdy enough for me?
• taternuts 5y ago
  The only good friends I've made and still talk to outside of college (and a few high school friends) were from a job I worked at for almost 4 years. I think that might have been the more important part of going into the office, at least for me, was you could potentially make some friends and get some social interaction. I'm thankful I had met my wife before the pandemic started otherwise this would have been even tougher. I've inherited a few of my wive's friends as well; but I think I'll have to do something like an old man's lacrosse or basketball league to make more friends, because I think it takes hanging out consistently with people to become true friends. I occasionally end up hanging out with a group of people I don't know and will get phone numbers to hang out again, but it's always awkward to actually follow up on situations like that.
• ctocoder 5y ago
  Never made any friends from College that stuck around. Maybe it is because I got a computer science degree. I think at the end of the day, you need to know how to play the social game as well as be competent to get ahead
  • eanc 5y ago
    I also didn’t, and maybe it’s me because I never have really made any very like-minded friends ever, but computer science sure didn’t make it easy, since there were always programming projects that could eat up every minute of your day every day. Or maybe a different school would have been a different story.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  YMMV My professional relationships formed AFTER college are far stronger. I honestly don't hang or communicate with anyone I knew in college. I've tried but we simply don't have enough in common - I felt like I was doing all the work and so eventually I just dropped it.
• seydor 5y ago
  Common experiences and struggles make friends. Like in the army. This is true at any age,but more pronouned right after university because there is a huge slump in the friendmaking potential. We need more shared experiences. How can we help?
• goldorak 5y ago
  It's really interesting. Reading the comments look like the primary reason to not maintaining friendship is mobility. I always suspected that humans are not well adjusted to that, think about what was a terrible punish back in time, exile. Exile meant loosing your friends and family network and I think we experience a mild form on this in current times (not nearly as bad) I'd never made strong bounds at work, my friends are the same as I grew up but I'm still living in my hometown (except for brief periods of working outside) and a lot of them are also here, so it's easy to maintain that friendship.
• aiyen 5y ago
  What do you mean, before we get rid of colleges? Are we getting rid of colleges?
• bckr 5y ago
  I think you're very fortunate to have made lifelong friends in college. I have 2 people that I hope will be lifelong friends from this time of my life. One is a teacher and another is a classmate. Then again, I went to a commuter school, spent too much time with my then girlfriend, and followed a weird career path.
  • rchaud 5y ago
    All the factors you mentioned hamper the development of those highly cherished lifelong friendships. College is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one.
    • readthenotes1 5y ago
      College isn't even a necessary condition to make those friendships.
      • xeromal 5y ago
        College is a booster for it though. Throwing a bunch of similarly-minded adults in a place where no one knows anyone and forcing them through difficult trials together tends to create very strong bonds. At any other stage past college, people are already established with coworkers and families and you have to push your way into their lives. In college, people are looking for friends.
    • AlchemistCamp 5y ago
      College isn't a necessary condition at all. Plenty of lifelong friendships are made in the military and in other contexts at that age.
• tra3 5y ago
  I miss read the title as “colleagues” and was trying to remember how many former coworkers I’m friends with. Surprisingly few, considering I have 20 years in the industry and spent 8 hours a day with some of these people.
  • zeroonetwothree 5y ago
    The definition of friend is “person you see regularly in more than one context”. So anyone you only see at work won’t be your friend. If you start inviting the same person to lunch every Sunday then that would work.
• yakak 5y ago
  People often have the strongest friendships made in this period of their life which is also when they leave home. I think blaming colleges for the psychological problems that develop at this stage is a similar correlation/causation situation.
• 2143 5y ago
  Guess I missed my bus. Twice. Nothing I can do about that. Moving on.
• rchaud 5y ago
  There is no alternative to college for the friend-building aspect. And even then, not all colleges are the same when it comes to making friends. I've been to a rural college in the middle of nowhere and a big-city college that mostly had commuting students. Guess which one was better for making friends. That's right, it's the one where people are effectively sequestered for months at a time. At the big city school, so many of the people were just 'passing by' in some way. They're doing a semester here and then going back, or they're working in the city and taking classes p/t, or taking an elective as part of a pre-med program somewhere else...the list goes on.
• RAdrien 5y ago
  Popular accounts from earlier decades, when fewer people went off to college, suggest that high school used to play this role, as well as being a place where many people met their spouse. My guess is college itself is less important to lifetime friend accumulation than spending any amount of significant time with age peers when you’re a young adult. In my circle, many life-long friendships were formed by young colleagues in their first jobs or among young post-college roommates. The typical college years just happen to line up neatly with the part of adult life in which people are most interested in new experiences and new people. You tend to make lots of lasting friendships when you’re interested in making friends, and everyone around you is as interested as you are. As an older adult, most people in the same stage of life simply have no interest in friendship with you.
  • jorl17 5y ago
    While that certainly plays a part, I think it's also the fact that in several colleges you work as a group in the face of adversity. At least it was in my case. We formed a group of very close friends who all worked together "against the system" to get the best grades possible while somehow staying sane[1]. Long days and nights working together, or just shooting the shit _at college_ because we were bound to stay there working. I'm 100% sure that in my personal case, I would not share the bond I do with my friends (even if they were other friends) if I had not met them under these circumstances. [1] I have been extremely lucky to have belonged to a group of "top of the class students" who worked together, shared notes, assignments and helped each other, instead of competing and throwing each other under the bus -- I know of other people who did not have the same luck.
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    Just my personal anecdote: while I still have friends from high school and college, some of whom are important friends to me, my colleagues from my first year of professional work have been life-long companions who come and go regularly, some as repeat colleagues, some as casual acquaintances and some as close friends. You may share certain things with a person at college but sharing a 30+ year career path with someone is also fairly significant.
• cm2012 5y ago
  Eh, you can make good friends any time if you put yourself out there.
  • eanc 5y ago
    I feel not convinced, given my experience, but I don’t know how to express it briefly. Maybe I could say that you need to have to happen to have some of the right tastes.
• sircastor 5y ago
  I think the proactive version of this is the third space: the club, the pub, the shop, whatever it may be where you go that isn’t work or home but is a space that is safe, comfortable, and conducive to interaction. These have often been neighborhood pubs, exclusive clubs (country club, elks, rotary, fraternity and sororities, etc) or community activities. It does require that you keep showing up though. Which is a challenge for some.
  • legerdemain 5y ago
    The challenge is that in the modern commercial landscape, this "third place" often simply doesn't exist. It's economically inefficient. At least in the parts of the US that I've visited, coffee shops either fill up with people working solo behind laptops, or they're chains that maximize turnover by making furniture scarce and uncomfortable. The pub is usually a bar with multiple huge televisions and blaring music. In a bar, I'm usually completely unable to follow a conversation at all. "The club" usually means a fraternal organization like the Elks or the Kiwanis. In most areas, these organizations have long ago aged into being irrelevant. And where they haven't, they're usually very conservative and very insular. Among the places I've lived, two used to have "community hubs" that died and were never replaced. College Park, MD, used to have a coffee shop called the College Perk in an old rambling house above a highway underpass. It closed down after an electrical fire. Cupertino, CA, used to have another place called Coffee Society. It was the kind of place where regulars met to play chess and have discussions. It closed several years and stands vacant to this day.
• the_only_law 5y ago
  Yeah. 18-20 was absolutely miserable for me. My arrogant ass chose to go directly bro industry (good decision, bad reasons) and I spent those years absolutely isolated. Social venues for people that age not geared towards university populations feel non existent. When I tired 21 the situation improved a bit, but I still feel the lasting effects of that early isolation. Oddly I still don’t meet people are my age group. I go out and I see all sorts of people from teenagers to people well into their 80s-90s but almost never find myself in a conversation with a peer. Most of my current social group is with people who have 5-10 years in me. It’s particularly interesting as since I’ve been five years old, I’ve always made friends with “older kids” with about that gap.
  • ravenstine 5y ago
    I can relate. Nearly all the friends and girlfriends I've ever had were a year or more older than I am, sometimes with a gap of 15 years. I don't really know why that is because, in retrospect, I was emotionally stunted until around my late 20's. Perhaps I had some other redeeming quality that made up for it which only older people could appreciate.
    • the_only_law 5y ago
      > Nearly all the friends and girlfriends I've ever had were a year or more older than I am Sadly I’m it doesn’t really work for me. People lose interest nearly immediately when they find out I’m younger and turn to being condescending about instead. It’s also a lot less socially acceptable for a guy to be younger than a woman in a relationship I’ve learned. My parents chastised my stepbrother for dating a girl with a few years on him while my father has over a decade on my stepmother. Platonic relationships are a little easier but you will definitely notice a disconnect eventually.
  • incompatible 5y ago
    I had a similar experience at that age, but I spent the years at university. I don't think I did it right, but I didn't have competent people lining up to give advice, and I had no Internet access in those days.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Bella-Xiang 5y ago
  some colleges will become friends for lifetime so not all of them can find a alternative.
• rayiner 5y ago
  How do you square this with the fact that more people go to college than every before, while people have fewer friends than ever before: https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/americans-have-fewer-friends-than-ever-before-study/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/americans-have-fewer-friends-t... The problem with college is that many people go off to some city they’re not from, then go take a job in some other city that’s not their college. I’m still best friends with my college buddies, but I see them pretty infrequently given how much we’ve all moved chasing careers.
  • daenz 5y ago
    College can increase lifelong friends at the same time that more people go to college and more people have fewer friends than ever. It's possible that there's confounding factors, like a general decline in socializing.
    • alimov 5y ago
      I agree with your comment. Personally, the vast majority of my closest friends live in other states and we rarely see each other in person, but when we do get together it’s like we were never really apart (thanks to the internet and similar interests that keep us in constant communication)
  • danenania 5y ago
    I think the geography factor is a major one and often gets overlooked. My sister went to NYU then stayed in NYC after. She ended up with tons of lasting friendships and a huge network, since a high % of NYU grads do the same. It seems far superior to going to university in some college town where everyone scatters to the four winds after graduating.
  • bruceb 5y ago
    part time college, commuter college, community college,online college isn't the same as being in a dorm living with people.
    • Broken_Hippo 5y ago
• adamnemecek 5y ago
  Discord.
  • sweetbitter 5y ago
    Only if your friend group tolerates closed-source messaging. Discord in particular is very unfriendly to anonymization, requiring a phone number to sign up.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      Anonymous friends. An interesting concept.
      • sweetbitter 5y ago
        Pseudonymous rather than anonymous, generally. And it can work better than you'd think, depending on how you've met! One interesting facet of how internet relationships are formed is that certain phases of those friendships might happen in different orders than they might in the physical realm- for example, on a rule-less gameserver that I used to play on (think literally 4chan in game form with a very old persistent map), the users would tend to go through trust first, and then getting to know each other later. This is efficient due to the lack of consequences you deal with for most things online, since if someone breaks that trust you will just find ones who won't. In the case of that particular gameserver, I've seen groups of like a dozen people capable of sharing even their account credentials to various things without having much fear, and this kind of thing really speaks volumes IMO. A number of people I've met in this way (chatrooms, games, etc) I've actually come to work on real projects together with. Though at this point, considering how comfortable we are giving info about ourselves, I suppose the pseudonymity somewhat lifts itself away over time.
    • thorncorona 5y ago
      I think that for the overwhelming majority of people, whether the messaging platform is closed source is not a consideration. Even among the tech community.
    • 5y ago
• lkrubner 5y ago
  Most of my life-long friends come from either the summer camp that I went to as a kid (and later worked at) or I made friends at work. There are plenty of ways experiences you can commit to that will allow you to make friends, you just need to find a year of your life when you can go and commit to those experiences.
• throwawayboise 5y ago
  Not in my experience. I don't see or talk to any of my friends from college. We're not on bad terms or anything, we just all went our own ways after graduation. Tried to keep up for a few years, but guys got married or busy with careers and it wasn't sustainable. I believe that physical proximity is the overriding necessity in long-lasting friendships (and feuds, as well, if it goes that way).
  • ajmurmann 5y ago
    One thing that worked for me is to set up calendar appointments with friends to check in. Even if it gets postponed or cancelled most of the time, it still will work. For me it has been working extremely well the last 4-5 years, even across continents.
• denkmoon 5y ago
  Made a bunch of lifelong friends at high school, and at University my social life dropped off a cliff - because I was responsible for making it happen, mostly. I'm lucky to have the quantity and quality of friends I do have though.
• kstenerud 5y ago
  All of my friends were made outside of school and college and work. These are places where you can meet the same people over and over again, but you can just as well get that in clubs or organizations or venues or meetups.
• drewzero1 5y ago
  Just one data point here, but my personal experience doesn't really agree with that hypothesis. I met my SO in college but aside from their family I do not have regular contact with anyone else I met during that time of my life. I was a commuter student but I went out of my way to meet and hang out with other students. I was lucky enough to have met my two current best friends in elementary/middle school and reconnect with them during high school. My closest friends right now are my high school friend group and my coworkers.
• simonsarris 5y ago
  I sort of wrote about this, under the heading Familiarity and Belonging https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/familiarity-and-belonging https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/familiarity-and-belonging You can get some of this today simply by committing to being a regular at places, even if it is just a cafe, or a club, or even if its just twitter! (provided you use it in a way that is oriented towards making friends and not political demolition derby) It takes time and effort, but less than setting you back $200k and 4 years worth
  • xeromal 5y ago
    This is exactly it. That's a big part of regular religious gatherings too. When you frequent a temple, mosque, or church every week. You're bound to make friends. We just haven't found a good replacement for that yet.
    • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Volunteering is a good alternative. My partner and I volunteered for years at a place (only disrupted because of COVID) and we made some great friends there.
  • ambrose2 5y ago
    I live in a city with things like a cafe nearby, lunch spots, etc., but making your own coffee at home is so much cheaper per year than being a “regular”. I’m not even sure how I could manage the time to do that, is that really realistic?
    • abhaynayar 5y ago
      It just depends on what your priorities are. If you enjoy being a regular at that cafe, the non-monetary "profit" of going there will offset whatever you save by making your own cheaper coffee at home. Same with time. If it's a high enough priority for someone, they will find the time to do it.
  • BlueTankEngine 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing your piece! It really resonated with me.
• crorella 5y ago
  I am extremely skeptical about this, I think college is better at that. In 17 years in the workforce I've made 0 friends, while I have 7-9 very good friends from college.
• cableshaft 5y ago
  I had two guys I maintained good friendships with after college, and then eventually they moved away, and we drifted apart. I did see one of them a few years ago, but other than that I haven't. I had much better luck meeting people that have stuck around via going to Meetups regularly. Sure, quite a few people I met through Meetup eventually drifted apart, but I still keep in touch and hang out semi-regularly with about 20 people (almost all I first met eight years ago). Most of us like to play board games, so a lot of these are board game gatherings. Also these gatherings aren't organized through Meetup anymore, we're all just friends now. I also still do things with a local writer's group from time to time, and several of those people I've known for over a decade now. Finally I have some game designer friends (got up to 8 people at one point, but a couple people moved away) that I've been meeting up with several times a year (except during the pandemic, although we have started meeting up again recently) for the past four years. That started by me just going to game designer conventions and going "Where you from? Oh you're from near me? I host a playtest night roughly once a month, you should come." So basically all these boil down to having some sort of shared passion. Those have helped maintain those friendships. You can always just invite someone to something related to the passion, although it doesn't have to be limited to just that. Most of these didn't happen until I was long out of college, btw. Most of my 20s were pretty lonely outside of work until I started going to these things.
• izzydata 5y ago
  I met someone early on in college so all of my friends were really "our" friends. They were friends of us as a couple and not individuals. Once we eventually split up 3 years later they never spoke to me again. It's probably best to be single throughout college, but oh well. Live and learn.
• saalweachter 5y ago
  So one of my armchair interests is to what degree the modern "move to eight different cities for school, work and adventure" lifestyle is a historical anomaly, and how to maintain communities when half the residents are temporary. Friendships, like community, requires proximity. If you live where you grew up, it is easy to maintain the friendships you made in highschool. If you move to a city to go to school there, then take a job there, it is easy to maintain friendships with your friends that do the same. Work friends are more easily maintained while you work together, or at least work nearby afterwards and frequent the same recreational venues in your free time. If you move around a lot, jobs and cities, it takes quite the effort to maintain friendships.
• ravenstine 5y ago
  In being the devil's advocate, and in being somewhat serious, is this what people actually want? It seems that everyone these days is aware that friendship is on the decline, but so few actually seem willing to do anything about it. Maybe people really do love their Disney+, their Oculus, their Doordash, and their Cheeto-dust more than they do their relationships with other people. If so, that seems to be the way of the world from which there is no turning back. The reason that college works in forming friendships and romantic relationships is the artificial environment it creates where people are obligated to show up and mingle with people who are from different backgrounds, and for at least 2 years. My experience was that as soon as college ended, most of my peer group effectively dropped out of existence. The excuse is always business, yet when I did meet friends it seems they had plenty of time to binge watch the Netflix show du jour. I'm sure someone is going to respond with something along the lines of "maybe they're avoiding you". Umm... I can't really argue against that other than by stating that said people do in fact initiate getting together with me, albeit rarely. Some people truly desire strong bonds, but it seems that most people decide that the strong bond with their spouse is good enough. Can't it be?
  • newaccount74 5y ago
    Staying in contact with friends is a lot of effort. As people start jobs and have kids you have less and less time. It gets harder to schedule meeting meeting people. In high school and university spending time with someone was as simple as texting "Hey wanna come over?". Now I have to schedule things days or weeks in advance and half the things get cancelled because the kids got sick or something. Binge watching Netflix on the other hand is easy. I can do it whenever I want.
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      The answer is pretty clear. University is the only time for most people where they live in a walkable area close by to their friends. Then they move out to the suburbs and become socially isolated for the rest of their lives while their initial friendships slowly decline. And now with working from home becoming common, we will probably see huge numbers of people who simply get no social interaction at all in their lives.
• zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  Oddly enough zero of my current friends were made at college. All of them were either before or after. Part of the reason is college lacks structured socializing time and I am really bad at unstructured socializing. So it wasn’t helpful at all for making friends. Work has been much easier given you are spending more hours with the same people and there are frequent “team bonding” type events that make it easy to get to know your coworkers. Another part of the reason is many people go to a different area for college so afterwards you live apart and stop being friends.
  • newaccount74 5y ago
    Same here. I have exactly 1 friend who I know from university, and the only reason we are still in contact is that I met him one day on the street and we found out we had become neighbours. I have no contact with anybody else from university. I had a few friends at university that I spent a lot of time with studying and partying, but after I graduated I didn't stay in touch with any of them.
  • jltsiren 5y ago
    > Part of the reason is college lacks structured socializing time and I am really bad at unstructured socializing. That sounds weird. I don't know what the American college experience is like (I just work here), but my experience in Finland was the opposite. I've had difficulties in making friends in adult life, because I'm also bad at unstructured socializing. When I was a student, there were opportunities for structured socializing everywhere. There were something like 250 student organizations in the university, and many of them also had national umbrella organizations, national meetings, and shared activities with similar organizations in other universities.
  • chongli 5y ago
    college lacks structured socializing time This may have been true of your college, at the time you attended, but I don't think the experience generalizes at all. Lots of colleges and universities feature heavily structured socializing time. They may have extensive orientation activities during the first week on campus, before classes begin. This functions as both an ice breaker and team building event within faculties or departments. As part of this process, first years / freshmen / frosh are typically introduced to a host of formal clubs, student organizations, and fraternities/sororities they can join. They will also often participate in orientation activities and be introduced to groups and events within their residence building (or college within a larger university) which adds another layer of structured socialization. Frankly, I would say that university has the potential to offer the most structured socialization time a person can experience throughout their entire life. Of course, as with any opportunity, the door may be open but it's up to the individual to walk through. Plenty of people go to school and put 100% focus on their studies. They never socialize with anyone and they largely remember school as a time of stress and isolation. Barring specific programs with insane workloads, that was their choice, however.
• geodel 5y ago
  I don't know. I met a large array of asshole and douchebags at college. And they look even worse when their made up fake social media posts show up..every once in a while. And I am only talking about people who I would call 'friend' in college. It could be that third world hustle in getting on with life did not leave much time or space for making deep bonds. Or may be my cynical nature just see through that superficial nature of deep friendship wows. So how did people live in communities before modern college phenomenon took over?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• qbasic_forever 5y ago
  I'm 20 years out of college and have some experience in the world under my belt. I remember having a similar viewpoint in my mid-20's just out of college, but over time those college friendships got more distant especially as people had kids and started families. I've instead formed close friendships through activities and clubs, like hobby and sports groups. Find people doing things you enjoy too and you'll find a new group of friends through it.
• gabereiser 5y ago
  I disagree with this. I've made plenty of friends outside of college. None of my friends are from college. A very select few are ex-coworkers, but most of my friends I have I found from shared interest groups or meeting them randomly. If you struggle with communication then I can understand the point of view. If you only experienced play dates when they were arranged then you never learned the social skills of walking up to someone who is doing something interesting and say "Hey, what is that? I'm curious to know more". Sometimes people will be annoyed. Sometimes they'll be thrilled you asked. The issue isn't that you aren't making friends after college. The issue is you have forgot how to talk to people (and likewise people have forgotten how to respond). If I'm doing something I'm interested in and someone comes up to me and asks me about it with genuine curiosity then I'm definitely going to talk to you. Obviously I'm using a figurative `you` and not literally, you.
  • ambrose2 5y ago
    Clearly that only works if the shared interest is something you’re doing out in public where a stranger might come across you. But I’ve never had this experience. My hobbies range from at home ones to outdoor sports, but don’t include “tinkering with a thing out in public and someone walks up to me and starts chatting”, with the exception of a car stopping to ask me if I’m okay while I’m pumping up my road bicycle with some extra air.
    • gabereiser 5y ago
      You mentioned road bicycle, are you involved in any group rides? Tinkering with a thing was just an example. I've gone out of my way to join groups doing all sorts of activities that I also enjoy. Snowboarding. Scuba. Bicycle riding. I dare you to just open up meetup or facebook or something and just go find a group ride to be a part of. Here where I live there's a monthly group bike ride that seems like the entire town is in on.
• bradlys 5y ago
  > Hanging out with a bunch of people who share similar interests with you for 3 - 4 yrs and living with them, fashions these strong bonds of friendship which are not made after this period. You're speaking about a very particular set of colleges. A lot of the colleges people go to these days with 40,000+ students are not like this. You're one of potentially thousands of people in your given major. I've had many classes where I did not have a single overlap of students from previous coursework. It was very common for me to not see the same faces in my classes as I progressed. Yes, some series of classes I saw SOME of the same people but it was little overlap. Add in that my classes had zero social components, grading on a curve with insanely difficult coursework, and no incentive to ever help each other and you've got all the more reason to never get close to anyone. A lot of students also don't live in dorms, live with other students, etc. I lived alone my entire college experience (6yrs). I have zero friends from college due to little class overlap, extremely competitive and cutthroat major, and very anti-social populous overall. Even the clubs were absolutely terrible. It was always a bunch of socially awkward nerd kids and I never found the clubs where cool kids were (guess they weren't in clubs!). It didn't help that the people who were most open were also people who had no intention of ever leaving the city that the college was in. I was in the mood to leave immediately. And I did and never went back since. I did end up making lifelong friends outside of college though during those years - but that was because I was quite actively social outside of college too.
  • criddell 5y ago
    The great friends I made were not from my major but from the dorm I lived in for a couple of years. The people on my floor (approximately 60 men and women) socialized a lot. People would go to the dining hall in big groups, to the pub in big groups, watch TV and play games together, and would invite each other to social events at school clubs. If you wanted to order a pizza or go for a coffee, you just had to stop by the common room and could reliably find two or three people to join you. A few times each semester we held a party for the entire floor. Sometimes one floor in the building would invite another floor and a lot of friendships (and many romances) were formed. In my third year I moved off campus and lived with people I met in the dorm. We were all in different programs.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Apreche 5y ago
  Just going to college isn't enough. This only happens for the right people going to the right college under the right circumstances. I went to college and lived there. I was far enough away from home that I could not return home with any frequency. I was a nerd at a college full of nerds and other like-minded people. I intentionally put more effort into making friends by participating in various clubs, social groups, and activities. I put more effort into that than I did into my studies. I did just enough schoolwork to graduate. Indeed, I did form lifelong friends during this time. Now compare that to the story of another person I know. They went to community college while still living at home. After a year or two of that, they did leave home to go to college. However, they were at a state school with people studying various things and having various interests. There was not a group of like-minded people there. Lots of the students there were commuters and not living in dorms. This person focused on their studies, not on socializing. This person's social group today is largely still comprised of their friends from high school. This scenario that OP describes happened for me, and presumably for OP as well. It doesn't happen for all, or even most, people attending college. It only happens for the right people who attend the right college in exactly the right circumstances.
  • aiyen 5y ago
    There’s a lot of different scenarios for sure. Take someone who goes to college and work a full time job. They won’t have much time for building and sustaining friendships.
  • ceeplusplus 5y ago
    Yeah, not only do you have to go to college but you need to have money to go out if you want to keep friends. Freshmen don't have much money so you can kind of skate by going to fast food places but once people turn 21 and start going out to bars and nice things you quickly see whose parents have money to fund their social lives. I couldn't afford to pay $50-100 on a bar tab every weekend.
    • ido 5y ago
      I don’t know where you live where a bar tab would be $50-100. I went to two universities (one in Israel and the other in Austria, neither particularly cheap countries) and cheap student bars had beers for €3-5. Might be a bit more today but not much.
• moneywoes 5y ago
  Yep, definitely one of my biggest regrests was not finding a way to go to a universitiy ( international student could only afford a 2 yr degree). oh well
• mastazi 5y ago
  TL;DR: IME, outside of the USA, high school friends > uni friends. I grew up in Italy and lived in Australia for many years, I have the impression that in both of these countries, high school has a bigger role than uni when it comes to life-long friendships. This is attested by the fact that in both countries you see a lot of very expensive private high schools (I attended one of those). But I've heard that in the US, uni (or "college" as it's called there) is the main networking environment for most people. I have friends from many different countries and from what I've heard, in this case the USA are the exception to the rule.
  • andai 5y ago
    Most of my surviving friendships are from high school, a few from university, and my oldest friends are actually people I randomly added on MSN Messenger by copy-pasting their email from stickfigure animation forums...
• spike021 5y ago
  I don't keep in touch with any friends from college, even the ones I hung out with for a majority of my time there. IMO for most people it goes the same way as earlier schooling periods; as people venture out to do their own thing, they make new circles of friends and generally you no longer fit into those circles. That's not to say nobody continues lifelong relationships, as you describe, but from my experience it can be like that.
  • polishdude20 5y ago
    Same for me. I was super tight with my friends for 4 years during my college experience. We were in every class together for 6 hours a day. Did everything together. Took a few years after graduating but now we don't hang out anymore. Maybe meet up once a year.
    • wyclif 5y ago
      Almost all of my remaining long-time friends are people I made friends with at university. I keep in touch with just one friend from high school. Everybody else either disappeared off the map or reinvented themselves and therefore didn't want to maintain their old friendships past high school graduation.
    • akuchling 5y ago
      In Billy Baker's book "We Need To Hang Out", which is about trying to fix his lack of social connection as a middle-aged guy, he eventually realizes (spoilers!) that he should stop trying to reconnect with his college friends who are now widely scattered and instead focus on building new connections with the men around him -- that guy at Pilates who seems friendly, or a father of one of his kids' classmates. It's fun to revisit the college friends again, but they just can't be around for the week-to-week.
      • jrh206 5y ago
        Why the men and not the people?
      • 5y ago
• jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  I do not speak to a single person I went to college with. I do however speak to my wife and my family and coworkers, as well as some childhood friends.
• Invictus0 5y ago
  What is the point of this post? No one is "getting rid of colleges", it's very easy to make friends outside of college in all different ways. You can meet people online, at social events, at activities, clubs, meetup groups, Facebook events, etc. If you need friends then you need to go out and get some: this is not a "we, the internet" problem.
• ggm 5y ago
  Dutch people told me school and uni friends are for life and work acquaintances never come close. I asked several, they agreed something about Dutch socialising during the formative years emphasises longterm bonds. I'm not saying other cultures are different, more that the modern Dutch youth recognises this and identifies with it overtly and strongly. If you move cities it can be isolating because you will be amongst people in your neighbourhood who have long bonds to others and won't routinely include you. Non Dutch partners have also reinforced belief in this saying that even as fluent speakers they're often in the "outside" group. The huge expatriate English language community working in the Netherlands may also emphasise this by being an "outsider" group most non locals are lumped into. A different culture but parallel experience was some friends of mine who moved to Australia and socialised with a specific circuit of friends, and when those bonds broke they found their neighbours and school relationships were set in "distant" mode and they couldn't connect with their local neighbourhood. They actually moved cities (country really) and established local links deliberately before any other kind second time round. Safer!
• xunn0026 5y ago
  I did not see this play out. Geek bonding did not happen as much and faded after school when everybody was getting enough geek stimulation at work. I've seen a great female gang from the University. But they were from random classes and the group held because they made quite some effort to maintain it. I doubt colleges need to be kept for the friendship angle.
• sanderjd 5y ago
  > Before we get rid of colleges we need to find an alternative to this. Nobody is getting rid of colleges. Also, I don't think this is underrated. It is highly rated and, as you point out, that is for good reason.
• gcheong 5y ago
  Just my anecdote but I lived for several years in a student co-op (kinda like a frat/sorority but run by the students and mixed genders) and we did alot together much of which was not academically related but even so I only managed to connect with one person from that time after I left and only then because we happened to run into each other while living in the same city. That was at the largest uni in my state. On the flip-side, though I didn’t stay in contact at the time, I did connect through Facebook with several of my housemates at the college I attended my freshman year (and subsequently dropped out of). I don’t remember anyone from my actual major.
• gravypod 5y ago
  My degree cost far in excess of 100k. If you gave me 100k liquid I would have found like minded people and educated myself far better than my college did.
• _carbyau_ 5y ago
  Relationships are based on shared experience. Face to face(rather than virtual) and high stress leads to greater reaction - either like or dislike depending on allegiance. College studies are a stress. College kitchen debate - sometimes trite, sometimes rigorous, sometimes hilarious seeded a lot of friendships. But only seeded. A fallibility for the sense of "belonging" in modern life is replacing "repeated physical presence at X time" with "virtual anytime". To "replace" the college experience schedule something that puts people physically in a similar space, at a regular time, with a goal. (See also why some people make friends at work.)
• voidfunc 5y ago
  Sometimes? I had good friends in college, but I barely talk to them anymore over a decade and some change later. They are in different industries, with partners and kids, and just doing their own thing. They've all sort of faded into background noise at this point. Every once and awhile I get a text message around the holidays from one or two of them. Most of my friends these days are former coworkers and random people I've met gaming online over the years.
• somenameforme 5y ago
  This wasn't the case for me and I'd also argue that in an ideal society it also should not be the case. The reason is in the corollary. Any meaningful chunk of people's friends being made in college ultimately means that the vast majority of their life is spent without making friends. And that'd be the perfect recipe for a lonely and isolated society. From a practical point of view as well, long distance friendships can work for some time, my most successful made it about 2 decades (with a few interspersed physical 'reunions' in between). But they will all eventually fail as the 'Hey how's it going' messages start to become more formulaic, repetitious, and more of an obligation than a desire. And so unless by happenstance you end up living in the vicinity of college friends, you're going to gradually drift away. And there's already a solution/alternative: literally sort of of local activity. I enjoy chess and a single trip to a local chess club is often more than enough to go from 'I know nobody' to 'I know lots of people' in a new city, and friendships form easily. I'd also encourage anybody here who has even a vague interest in chess to consider that. Chessclubs often have a huge diversity of skill levels, always including a few guys who don't know that much more than how the pieces move - but enjoy getting out and going to play against other people. And "chess club" often translates to 'Hey we meet up this time at this restaurant and play a bit - BYOB.' B being board of course, there's always beer a plenty there. Best part of it all is that chess players tend to be pretty atypical so you'll find all sorts of interesting personalities.
  • thimkerbell 5y ago
    Cool, but chess is zero-sum. How could you get a bunch of people together to build something to compete, instead?
• peterhunt 5y ago
  Plenty of people form lifelong friendships in all sorts of ways that aren't an expensive college. For many, their lifelong friendships are cousins, high school friends, or colleagues.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Gatsky 5y ago
  Further to this, there is partner selection either directly, or establishing social networks that lead to partner selection. Getting a bunch of young people together who pass some threshold for (generally) favourable behavioural and cognitive traits sounds like Huxley's A Brave New World, but this is essentially what University is. Maybe it is net negative for the progress of human civillisation (eg unhappy children of high stress/achieving/spoiling parents, echo chamber conformism, capture of high potential individuals into high status low potential jobs). But it is also plausible that this kind of partner selection leads to outlier intelligence in offspring, compared to selecting partners randomly or from geographic/social pools unenriched for achievement.
• elvis10ten 5y ago
  For people that skip colleges, it’s like skipping a generation. This is especially true when skipping colleges is not the norm in whatever environment you find yourself in. I started working when I was 16, most of my friends and romantic partners have been older than me. While this helped me adult faster. The downside is I find it generally hard to hangout with gen Z (lacking opportunities & cultural fit); and older folks often dismiss me because of my age (because of some preconceived notion of how age maps to behavior).
• iostream24 5y ago
  I don’t think people underestimate this at all. I eye rollingly note that much of what is allegedly about opening horizons and minds ends up being “good old friend bonding” and sentimental alma-mater patter. I’m not sure most folks ever leave the circles they make in college, much as folks who didn’t go to college tend to not leave high school groups. I find this tendency to be an inbreeding factor that encourages “big fish in small pond” mentalities and parochialism. Would that a lonesome study abroad led to bonding with different nations peoples, for the sake of leaving our nationalist naval gazing bubbles for the sake of world peace and international cooperation, but instead we bond with people ostensibly in the same sócio-economic basket.
• EdwardDiego 5y ago
  I achieved the same when on social welfare, spending all day smoking weed and playing Counterstrike over LAN with my flatties. We're still great mates 20 years on, but we've all got jobs and mortgages these days. Hanging out with people leads to friendships, college is one way to achieve that. I sincerely hope you don't think it's the only way. (Incidentally, the fact that my country supported me when I was deeply depressed and not even trying in life is why I consider it a privilege to pay the top tax rate now. When I was kicked out of home at 15, I lived on charity and shoplifting/stealing from cars/cheque fraud. Once I turned 16, I could get social welfare payments as an unsupported youth, and had no real need to commit any more crimes. That's why they call it social security, it helps keep society secure against poor people.)
• randomsearch 5y ago
  It’s interesting to note that during college we live closely with lots of strangers in a big community, make lots of friends, and typically describe those days as some of the best of our lives in retrospect. We then move away and live in increasingly isolated housing, typically long distances from our friends. Modern life doesn’t make much sense in this way. We’re sociable chimps that need a group. I really love the idea of living in a street with friends nearby. Maybe I can make that happen.
  • Tade0 5y ago
    > Maybe I can make that happen. The most surefire way to achieve that is to move into a large, new housing project, but these are rare nowadays and usually work-related. My grandparents moved in their early 20s from their village to a whole damn city district built specifically to accommodate workers(along with their families) employed in a newly built steel mill. Everyone was roughly the same age and had children at the same time. To this day I think it's the single thing communism got right. I spent the first years of my life living in an apartment complex for university employees, because that was my father's line of work back then.
    • qntty 5y ago
      See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect
    • jimmydddd 5y ago
      When my wife and I had our second kid, we moved into a new small (28 indentical homes) housing development (in the US). The builder had owned the land for a long time and bought it for a very low price, so he priced the houses below market value. The school system had recently been highly touted. Everyone who bought a house had a young kid or was about to have kids, valued education, and had similar interests. We all bonded and had great block parties and other shared events as our children grew up. But like you mentioned, these types of experiences are rare.
  • randyrand 5y ago
    this is part of the reason why so many homeless people stay living in the streets. It’s definitely more social than an apartment building, assuming you feel a sense of belonging when living with other homeless people.
• someelephant 5y ago
  I regularly make new friends. Traveling a lot helps. Avoid talking excessiviely about work or your kids if you want to make new friends. Those topics are generally not interesting to anybody but you. I should also say I finished college a looooong time ago.
• helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  This can be said of many situations where young people (with malleable characters - ie less set in their ways and interests and likely to get on with different people) are put into close proximity to each other. Those who served in the military (particularly conscription), or worked or did voluntary service overseas or in a remote location or just in a tight group of workers often make similar strong bonds. I'm not sure I understand the reference to "before we get rid of colleges" but they are an expensive way of making friends.
• indigochill 5y ago
  > Before we get rid of colleges we need to find an alternative to this. Even some non-believers recognize that church (or your religious gathering of choice) carries certain social benefits in terms of providing adults of all ages a regular intentional community with people from (hopefully) different backgrounds that's oriented around community service rather than consumerism. Though like college, people's experiences vary dramatically.
  • nottorp 5y ago
    Any group that does things together and not for the aim of profit will do. That "third place" that's mentioned here and there. Historically you were forced to do religion (by law or peer pressure) so it monopolized the role. But anything that you reasonably like doing will do. As long as you don't treat it like work and take it easy enough that you have time to socialize.
• 0x20cowboy 5y ago
  "I am so happy, 'cause today I found my friends. Their in my head."
• golemiprague 5y ago
• AlchemistCamp 5y ago
  > Before we get rid of colleges we need to find an alternative to this. Most people in the US didn't go to college until very recently and the vast majority still don't graduate. Is it your belief that the majority of Americans simply didn't make lifelong friends and that college is the default solution?
  • Rechtsstaat 5y ago
    I believe the point is more that there is a growing sentiment that colleges are a waste of money, and that—purely for learning a trade—you're better off doing a bootcamp or self teaching. That might be true, but apart from education, colleges offer lots of opportunities to make friends without explicitly trying to do that. You can make friends being self-taught, but you'll have to be proactive in going to social events because you won't be surrounded by like-minded people by default.
    • AlchemistCamp 5y ago
      People have made friends without college for millennia. I also don't see college as uniquely powerful in that regard. A compelling case could be made that college is less likely to lead to deep bonds than serving in the military is, for example. I'd also say that things like coding bootcamps or intensive language schools are fantastic places for making friends—largely due to the greater number of hours per day and the greater intensity of effort involved than in a typical college experience. Intense startups can also have this feature. We can agree that teaching yourself, by yourself, at home being less likely to widen your social circle, though!
• traceroute66 5y ago
  I would argue that for Ivory Towers universities, their students would be well served by spending 3-4 years hanging out with people in the real world outside their four walls. Take Oxford (UK) for example. For some reason Oxford is taken to be the pinnacle of UK Ivory Towers. As a result people who go there form a social clique and tend to spend the rest of their lives surrounding themselves by people who also went to Oxford. They also end up being so insecure that there is now that infamous saying, "How do you know if someone went to Oxford ?" ... "Don't worry, they'll tell you". (for those unfamiliar, it is a reference to inevitable the "When I was at Oxford" bragging that Oxford graduates seem to have an inbred tendency to inject into their discussions at any opportunity).
  • pjc50 5y ago
    Yes, but getting surrounded by people who also went to Oxford is the point - how else are you to get a Cabinet position and a peerage? If you haven't got those connections you have to pay (sorry, "donate") real money for those privileges.
    • traceroute66 5y ago
      > how else are you to get a Cabinet position and a peerage? Indeed. PPE @ Oxford a.k.a the Westminster seat degree
  • lozenge 5y ago
    Here I go, telling people I went to Oxford... the town people have little to no interest in socialising with people who are leaving in three years' time.
  • wyclif 5y ago
    For some reason Oxford is taken to be the pinnacle of UK Ivory Towers Because it's the most prestigious and the most-well connected (i.e. the most highly prized network) university in the UK.
    • traceroute66 5y ago
• ge96 5y ago
  I had tens/hundred(s) of friends (or acquaintance) during those years but later on I did a purge on FB to keep only people I talked to. Later on moved to another state. Now I'm down to 4 people or so like actual friends (care about me). I did change as a person/became introverted. I used to be a straight up obnoxious/cringe jackass when I was younger. But I put myself out there that's how I came to know so many people at that time. But yeah I agree that's an environment ideal for mingling especially regarding partners.
• langsoul-com 5y ago
  Uni is nice because it presents a space where lots of people with similar interests come together. Outside education institutes, there aren't many places like that. Or at least we need to find them. For IT, I reckon one would be co working spaces.
• jstanley 5y ago
  > Hanging out with a bunch of people who share similar interests with you You had a very different experience of university than I did.
• wink 5y ago
  I assume you're American? Then I'm already confused by the use of the word 'friend' because that could be a person you've been talking to every day for decades or someone you interacted with three times on Twitter. I am honestly lost when someone says 'friend', sometimes it's 'good friend' and I might be persuaded to believe it's what I would call a friend. To the point, seeing as nearly all universities here are not campus universities (and interestingly, if they're a campus university your housing might still be somewhere else in the city and your friends may as well live in another neighborhood) - do continental Europeans have less (intensive/amount) friends than Americans? (Please disregard my first paragraph now :P). I mean that's pretty hard to measure already - some value quality, some value quantity, and for everyone a certain number feels okay. Anecdote time. I studied at a university in my home town and made very little friends in my 'class' (as in the year I started) but I formed quite a few better bonds with people in our IRC chatroom and the forums, all having 1-2 years later than I did. So while I might in theory regret mostly hanging out with my highschool (and other) friends, I simply didn't get along very well with the people at university. But I actually did make friends (and also people I enjoy seeing again) at the job I worked at during my studies (and a bit longer).
• yoz-y 5y ago
  I tend to agree. Even though I'm not in touch with my friends from college all the times, it's still the people I consider the best friends. If I ever needed help they would be the people I turn to. I think this is mainly because for me in particular college was the only place where I lived with people from "start to finish", so everybody spread out at the same time, keeping the connection alive.
• noufalibrahim 5y ago
  Colleges are basically a networking system first and an educational institution later. Bootcamps, online courses etc. have bitten off a serious chunk of the latter part. Arguably, a formally recognised degree is still valuable atleast for some professions but that's mostly it. The networking system is hard to overestimate. But this is only sufficiently true if you go to a "good" college. You meet people and have the time and proximity to vet them over an extended period. You also have a brand (e.g. in India, being an IITian automatically changes the way people look at you and that's worth something if you're trying to get funding etc.). There are no quick substitutes for this and in my mind, colleges are still very valuable for this.
• onion2k 5y ago
  these strong bonds of friendship which are not made after this period A young person wrote this. FWIW I'm 45, and pretty much all of the close friendships I have today are people I met after graduating from university, simply because now my uni friends are scattered around the world and I hardly see them.
  • andrew_ 5y ago
    Agreed. 43 and same. Everyone I was close with for 6 years (yeah I was the better-part-of-a-decade, loved to party guy) moved on, moved away, made their families, etc. The last time I heard from someone I went to school with was probably 10 years ago. The friendships I made immediately following university however, have proved to be more permanent. I've even moved quite literally across the country and still hear from them on the regular.
    • ne0flex 5y ago
      Given I'm a bit younger (currently early 30s), but I have the same experience. I don't speak much with anyone I went to college with. However, in my 3rd year of college, I did an exchange program to Japan for one year. I'm still in contact with a few of the people I met during that year abroad, despite us being more internationally seperated (some live in Europe, others in Asia and some spread across North America).
  • bko 5y ago
    I agree. The best thing about college was that all my friends were from different walks of life. We just happened to be friends because we were assigned as roommates. My friends included a pot head, a meat head, a brooklyn hipster and some in-between. We bonded mostly over drinking and dating. It was a great time, but after college we didn't work in the same industry so some moved away. We eventually started getting in serious relationships and stopped drinking as much so obviously there was less to hold us together. Today my friends are mostly people I used to work with and we have more in common, although we're still pretty different since we came together by accident of employer
  • true_religion 5y ago
• formerkrogemp 5y ago
  Do we really need to find alternatives to fashioning friends? Networking events and exclusive online clubs over traditional college should provide one with all of the professional contacts - I mean, friends - that one needs.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I had the same bonding experience in most of the workplaces I worked at. You can also get it by going to a co-working space and participating in the local life. What happens most of the times is that from every place I keep 1-2 people I'm really friends with and the rest stay in my extended network. My closest friends are currently from my high school, from the startup scene in a place I lived 8 years ago and from a few employers in the past. None of them live near me. My friends from college kind of disappeared.
• irrational 5y ago
  We stayed in touch with our college friends for about a decade after college, but we all live in different parts of the country and eventually fell out of contact. One difference might be that we graduated before social media existed and none of us has adopted any sort of social media since (though, for all I know the submitter of this article might be one of my college friends - how would I know? This is the main reason why I don’t consider sites like Hacker News and Reddit to be social media. Everyone is anonymous.) However, I have met lots of friends in the state I have lived in for the past 2+ decades. We go camping, play board games, do bbqs, go to movies, etc. together. So… I don’t know what the submitter is talking about.
• gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  I had the (mis)fortune to not be able to afford residence so I lived off campus and made most of my friends/social circle through the shitty fast food job I worked at. Think I went to 1-2 dorm parties, and I felt the otherness from the on-campus dwellers. However I met lots of artists and bohemians compared to the university demographic (art school on other side of the city) but I definitely feel the hit at this point in my career. No regrets though, I had a lot of fun, learned a lot and am doing well now. Got to party with well known musicians in the city at that time. I think I was too much of a sperg for dorm life anyway, much prefer the club scene and house/loft parties.
• mobilene 5y ago
  College was 30+ years ago for me. I have one tight friend still from those days. That's it. In my first 10 years post-college I was way tighter with four or five more college friends. But like so many others have noted here, they all moved to distant corners, got into their careers, and started families. All of our lives got full and we became less connected with time.
• robobro 5y ago
  I have zero friends from my university courses. Also have a PhD. My friends I made during that time were my neighbors in my ghetto and my online friends and punk rockers. I have no nostalgia for my university days. Part of why I was not so popular in uni is because I was incredibly poor but also refused to take loans. Anyone else like me?
• codingdave 5y ago
  I would have agreed 5-10 years out of school. Since then, I've met a more diverse group of people and seen that everyone makes friends when they are young, whether you are in college or not. And almost everyone loses touch as they get busy with careers and/or families. Finally, new friends come into your life once your career and family winds down as you get older. Each new chapter of your life brings new friends and changes to old ones.
• fortran77 5y ago
  Is this why people who had this privilege want the Taxpayers to put up 1.5 trillion dollars to erase their debt? To subsidize a 4-year bonding experience?
• gilbetron 5y ago
  College was a fun time and I met a lot of friends, and, 30 years later, I actually stayed in touch with none of them beyond the first 3 or 4 years. It is definitely easier to make friends in that kind of situation, but it doesn't mean they remain long term friends, ime.
  • AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    I think if anything all the anecdata suggests that the reverse of the OP's claim is true: that college helps foster the understanding that some/most relationships are fleeting and have their beginning and their end. Feels a lot like the kind of relationships you get into in the business world. I wonder if that's a coincidence or by design.
• erie 5y ago
  My experience is different; college has not helped me in making lifelong friends nor develop my learning, maybe it was due to immaturity, rivalry, and jealousy among us. Yes, rivalry for grades and girls, but when I worked as an intern, the diverse colleagues who were older than I was, offered me incredible opportunities to discuss everything. We would go, in (Cold war –Damascus 1987) cultural centres (German Goethe-Institut, American and French) free movies, books and magazines in addition to lectures and open discussion. I was stunned at the variety of American magazines, showcased in the US cultural centre and free to read. The French cultural centre offered free movies, the latest in a very comfortable luxury seats. A discussion of the movies follows in the by the center’s director and we would compete discussing opposing views on many issues in French.
• throwaway743 5y ago
  Tight knit group of 8, broader group of ~20+, met almost 15 years ago in NYC, and Beijing on a school trip. Most of us went to the art school (New School/Parsons), others the liberal arts (Lang) and music (Jazz) schools. The 8 of us still talk daily, most of the rest on a monthly if not weekly basis. Still live in the city except for 1 who moved out West, but is still in touch with us at least weekly. Post graduation, we used to meet up 1-2x a week before the pandemic and during the pandemic outdoors, but have Steam nights at the same frequency. We always have a good time, always showing love for each other and each other's work. Always open and honest to each other's constructive criticisms/suggestions (regarding our personal and work projects) and there to support one an another. Which is of huge value, as in most of our cases it's rare to get that honest/altruistic insight in a work environment or situations where money and time is on the line. The 8 of us alone are a mixed bag, but even more so the broader group. We range from introverts (myself included) to extroverts, male/female, many of us skaters, we look like the UN both in terms of ethnicity, origin, languages, but we're one fam. Some of us partied hard during our school years, some didn't at all but still attended/enjoyed parties, most of us were in moderation (my belief = work hard, then blow off steam but never to party too hard), but all of us were/are dedicated to our work and helping each other along the way. Our professions range from animators/motionographers, plumbers, illustrators, devs, ux/ui designers, graphic designers, musicians, fashion designers, painters, doormen, game designers, marketers, critical/political theory writers, hospitality workers, photographers. Some work a mix of those by nature of our schooling, some by necessity, some focused on one skillset more than others. Having this kind of diversity in our group is not only beneficial in the selfish sense of networking, but more so in opening up one's perspectives on life, the world, practices, general thinking, etc. And aside from the diversity, even though we're all different in some way we have this bond where we feel like we've found "our people" and that we've known each other our whole lives. It all sounds corny, but really it's an incredible thing and something I'm more and more appreciative and grateful for with each passing day. Sure the debt sucks ass, but I wouldn't trade my friends, our love and respect for each other, and our experiences together for the world. We're family.
• alberth 5y ago
  It's not as simple as university or not. 1. KIDs: do you have kids, if so - your friends will enviably before other parents who have kids your age. If no kids, proceed to next step. 2. RELATIONSHIP: are you in a committed relationship, if so - your friends will largely become who your significant others prior friends are. If not in committed relationship, proceed to next step. 3. GRAD SCHOOL: did you go to graduate school? If so, your friends will most likely be people you met in graduate school since your economic and social circumstances are most similar. If not graduate school, proceed to next step. 4. UNDERGRAD: did you go to undergrad? If so, your friends will most likely be people you met in undergrad since your economic and social circumstances are most similar. If not undergrad, proceed to next step. 5. HIGH SCHOOL: did you go to highschool? If so, your friends will most likely be people you met in highschool since your economic and social circumstances are most similar.
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  I went to a commuter school and did most of my degree online. I'm 30 now. I found most of my friendships through the recurring faces/names that made it through to each new online/night class and we'd meetup every so often to talk classes, life, and more. Outside that, I just showed up to the same location on the same day and time and found many people doing similar where friendships formed. While these are strong bonds as we still chat every other year, it's not an excuse to not have life change for the better. You don't need to find an alternative before moving forward, people will adapt to it just like I did. Although I wish I had a traditional college experience, I didn't get that opportunity in life. I had to work to pay my tuition, books, and rent. That's because I valued not going into debt and getting a state school education.