If someone told me a year ago, that by December of my first semester of college I would still primarily been socializing with people I went to high school with, I probably would have laughed in their face.
As a senior in high school, after being trapped with the same people for four years, I looked forward to all the new friendships and connections I would make in college.
Especially at UK, with a student body of nearly 30,000, I thought there would be no way I would want to spend time with the eight students from my town who came to UK as well.
I truly thought that being around so many new people would allow me to thrive and find friend groups that I mesh perfectly with.
However, I found this was much easier said than done. In the first two weeks of school, I struggled so much with being able to talk to new people and easily click with them. Because of this, I allowed myself to fall back into the comfort of spending time with familiar people who already knew me.
Now, the people from my high school that I spend time with now are not the same people I spent a lot of time with in high school. We have gotten closer here at college.
Making new friends in college has been much more difficult than what I expected a year ago. I surprised myself by spending more time with high school friends than I ever imagined I would.
I wouldn’t consider it a bad thing that I still hang out with people from high school, just unexpected. While I am slightly disappointed in myself for not finding my forever college friends right away, I know I still have plenty of time to find my people, and in the meantime, I still have connections from back home helping my transition into my new normal.