Second Year Shift: Friendships

Like many second years, I found coming back to uni with a group of people that I was already friends with a much better experience than first year. The idea of living with some of my closest friends was something I was very excited to do. 

The more I found myself settling into second year life, the more I seemed to forget about my second life. The people that had once been my centre over the summer, seemed to slip towards the back of my mind, as if they were existing in another universe. I was forgetting about being home. It seemed a conscious effort to remind myself to check in with people I was close friends with at home, often surprised at how long it had been since the last time we talked. 

Yet talking again felt the most natural thing, like no time had passed. When I came home for reading week, being home once again felt like my new norm and in no time at all uni began to feel like some alternate reality. I was back home seeing the people I always saw, doing the things I always did and, in some ways, it felt like I’d never left. 

It was strange to remember that in first year these people had seemed like the centre of my world, the people I was separated from by uni. But as time went on and I met more people and began to spend all my time with them, this shifted. By second year I was moving into a house with people I had only known for a year but already felt like longer, I couldn’t help but think how different this all was from last year.  

Moving into a flat with people I didn’t know in a city that I had never lived before was more challenging than I’d originally thought. It felt more overwhelming and anticlimactic than exciting for the first few weeks. No matter how many times people tell you that everyone is in the same boat in first year, it is still a daunting thing to make new friends to fill the hole of the ones that you left behind.  

Eventually I found my people through random events and chance encounters like sitting next to someone in my first ever lecture and meeting people through societies (some of which I never went back to).  

As uni goes on and sixth form and college begin to fade more into the background, it takes more of a conscious effort to keep those friendships going. Making the time in the day to call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, making plans to visit them at other universities or just sending reels. I begin to appreciate the friends who I cannot see for months and then meet up again and feel as if no time has passed.

Keeping a long-distance friendship alive takes effort from both sides, especially when uni begins to feel like the main part of my life, I have to remind myself I exist in multiple universes not only the one I am currently in.

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