Muhummad Ali said, "Friendship is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything." Networking is the bread and butter of college. That may sound impersonal and opportunistic, but the friendships we make in college prove beneficial to our adult lives. We meet a wide range of people during our four years in university.
Not only do we meet a plethora of people, we change an exorbitant amount ourselves.
College is a transition. We grow from teenager to adult and from dreamers to doers. In four years, we grow extraordinarily as people. It’s this time when we test our boundaries and abilities. This is the time we find out things that we like or dislike.
We cultivate our sense of self and we experience freedom — both the benefits and consequences.
The friends we make in college are the ones who see us through the transition period. They see us at our worst. College friends are privy to our personal and academic failures.
During times when defeat is in our eyes, they are the ones who support us through it. College is equivalent to a lifetime of experiences and the friends we make in this place are the ones who will love us for who we are.
Author Jessica Park said, “The friends you make in college are friends you'll have for life, even if you don't talk for years at a time.”
The hardest part about all of it is the loss of friends. People that we’ve grown up with and stood by in the halls of high school sometimes walk away from us. Or we have to walk away from them because they cling to the past and we stride toward the future.
Losing friends is inevitable. No one can escape the consequences of maturation. As we learn, we grow and sometimes, our oldest friends don’t grow with us – they grow apart.
Musician Dave Mustaine said, "Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard."
Friendships require care and patience. They take time to build and effort to maintain. They are beneficial to anyone, because humans were never meant to live without them. It's not about what friends can do for you career-wise. Friendships are supposed to be good for the soul.
A person that fills you with joy and can make your day a little bit better is a friend worth having. They're investments. You invest in other people, but they also represent an investment in yourself.
Reach the blogger at Stephanie.Tate@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @StephanieITA
