Old Friendships and What They Mean For Home

It’s a new year, and some of us returning Gators are returning with some serious baggage from the holiday season. When we leave behind our plebeian friends for the golden fields of Gainesville and our top 8 public university, a new life begins. Most students experience a departure from the old as they struggle through college to discover the new, and this departure often sentences old friendships to death by distance.

At UF, these old companions and the tried-and-true high school routines they fit neatly into are exchanged for the uncertain freedom of a loose class schedule and a half-decent nightlife. Maintaining these old friendships can seem like a chore at times, especially when new friends enter to fill the void, and old friends seem to move on. However, after spending three weeks with an old friend, one whom I grew distant from during my time at college, I’ve realized how important it is to keep the people important to you in your life.

It was a rainy December night as I drove down U.S. 19 in Tarpon Springs, my home town, next to one of my oldest friends.

As specific as that sentence is, it is actually true of three separate occasions during this winter break. Three different nights I drove with three different passengers on the same road; it was just a sad but predictable coincidence that it was raining each time. These late-night drives are easy to accomplish over winter break, the three week gap from responsibilities that seems like a respite from reality. The typical college student will enter their home delirious and nutrient-deprived from finals cramming and spend most of their break wasting their parents’ gas, money and food. It is a careless time, and parents are so happy to see their little adults that they let the wrecking balls that once were their kids obliterate their lives out of love.

Against these circumstances, as well as the familiarity of the holidays at home and the absence of any of new friends, spending time with old friends is a natural outgrowth of winter break. It is simple, not to mention, fun. It feels right. Catching up with your hilarious middle school best friend or your breathtaking high school sweetheart, you realize how much you both have changed (hopefully for the better).

It is important to realize, though, that this is not all that life is. As nice as it would be to spend our days in an eternal limbo between Dec. 20 and Jan. 1, it neglects any of the trials that define our characters and our spirit as Gators. There are places for eternal laziness and partying, they are called Tallahassee and Orlando.

It is imperative that we calibrate our lives to handle the hardest parts, as fun as it may be to dote on the details of simple days. This means finding a place for old friendships that we realize we require in our lives inside the struggle that is attending UF. It is different for every friend, too. Friends are like cups of coffee at different diners; they each require a unique amount of cream and sugar to come out right, and it's never the same at any place you go but if you get it right the taste is perfect. For maintaining old friendships, this translates to some needing a call every other week while others are fine with a Snapchat once or twice a month. This depends a lot on the independence of the person, as well as how close your relationship was when you were younger. Sometimes, too, a friend occupies a place in your life that cannot be filled by a stranger you met at the bar at White Buffalo or in the seats of the football stadium. When this is the case, and many times it is, making time to fit in a person feels nothing like the chore that it looks like on paper.

While keeping up with old friends is to a person’s life as “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” was to the reality television industry, it is also true that we can’t neglect our present in favor of the past. New friendships are necessary, and if ignored or not made their absence can leave as great a void as the emptiness of losing old ones. So go to a study group, join a few clubs, attend that event in your major, slide to mid on a Friday night and hit up the boys for a “Super Smash Bros” tournament or the ladies for a wine night to spill the tea. Enjoy college and all of the amazing people enjoying it with you, but remember who made you into the person you are. New friends are vital to your college experience and your mental health, and your family or best friends from home cannot take their place; however, new friends cannot usurp old ones. It isn’t a battle between who is more important and which way is best to divide your attention in your life, it is an equilibrium between developing brand new relationships and maintaining old ones.

Kyle Cunningham is a UF history major. His column appears on Mondays.