by Kevin
Our next guest article comes from Peter Miller, Network Engineer at 38th Cyber Installation Group at Tinker Air Force Base.
Peter has recently transitioned from his college life to the working world. One of the challenges of this transition (among many) is dealing with social isolation, especially during a pandemic. How can a young professional attempt to maintain past friendships while building new relationships? Therefore, I asked Peter to describe these challenges in more detail and provide tips on building a fulfilling social life post college.
by Peter
Like every good question, the answer to this blog’s title is not a simple yes or no. You will lose touch with many friends, and even some of your closest friends right now. That is a weird and lonely process, but I think it’s kind of inevitable to the life changes you go through after college. On the other hand, you can also make new, lifelong friends after college, who you share important goals and life experiences with. After 18 months or so out of college, I think it may be helpful to record some of my experiences, surprises and advice.
I hope to achieve two goals in this blog:
1) I want to reassure you that the social dread you feel is completely normal, and there will be some loss of your existing friendships. That’s also normal, and not a personal failure.
2) I want to encourage you about your own possibilities. It’s definitely a new kind of friendship, but post-college social life can be fulfilling in new and exciting ways!
To point 1 (the bad news):
You will lose touch with a lot of people. I don’t think I quite appreciated how different the student daily routine is from the working adult life. This has been exaggerated for me, as my job had a lot of business travel for the first year, and then a pandemic in my second! But the central idea here is still true: you simply will not meet and talk to a hundred people every single day across classes and extracurriculars. The effort of keeping all those social ties by texting or setting up coffee dates is just not feasible for more than a few months.
Here’s my advice: Start thinking now about which relationships are really, really important to you. Who is it that you share everything with, that gives you good advice, and will always help you out of any mess you put yourself in? For me, that’s about four people, and at first I thought “Oh no, I only have four friends!” But it’s more than enough, in reality. Close friends are special, and take a lot of investment. Put an absolute priority on continuing to share life with those few people. It will still hurt to lose a lot of the casual friendships built on video games, social clubs, or study groups. But it will hurt a lot less if the most important parts of your emotional life don’t lose support.
To point 2 (the good news):
Finding a place to fit in as an adult, not a “kid” or “student”, has been really exciting and meaningful to me. I would never have guessed two years ago that most of my friendly conversations would be about the mayor’s school board appointment or the best mortgage broker. But it’s kind of cool to see yourself have new concerns, ideas, and challenges to overcome. It’s even better to share those milestones with your (previously mentioned) best friends and coworkers.
My advice here is this: Make friends at work!
You’re gonna be spending a lot of time there, and these are people you will naturally build a lot of memories with. I have been very blessed to work in an office with some really amazing, inspiring people. My work friend group has a wider range of ages, backgrounds, and life goals than my college friend group. I definitely wish I had been less intimidated by my office job at first. Ultimately, everyone there wants to enjoy their work hours, share some gossip, and unwind with weekend hangouts. This seems obvious, but it definitely took down my anxiety of inviting myself into those existing groups. I have learned a lot from my mentors and peers at work, and it’s so exciting to think that for years still, those connections will get deeper.
In summary, social life after college is very different, but completely worth it. I personally have made some mistakes in this transition. I still am working on trying to maintain some friendships I shouldn’t have let slide. I sometimes feel lonely and isolated at the end of a day, especially working from home this year. But I have made some amazing lifelong friends in just my first two years at work, and I can’t wait to see those relationships blossom for a long time! I have continued to share life with my closest and most caring friends from college. It takes a lot of initiative, just like the transition from high school to college. But the possibilities for deep, lifelong friendships are just around the corner. Go get them!