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Saying Good Bye, Staying In Touch
Maintaining, building and meshing friendships after high school graduation.

by Jessica Stevenson
for About.com

Every year kids and teens look forward to summer vacation. The time away from school is a welcome break in routine and a time to socialize and bond with friends. But for one group of teens the beginning of summer vacation marks the end of an era – the grads. For the senior class the last day of school before summer vacation is the last day of school ever and this means some pretty big changes. Gone are the days when friendships were packaged and presented in the easy to navigate format of the school hallways now maintaining friendships, even the best of friendships, is going to take time and effort. Why? Because the captive audience is gone and everybody is going in different directions; some people are off to college or university, some are out to travel and experience the world, and others are going to dive right in to the workforce. Whatever the path your friends are choosing after graduation chances are very good that you won’t all walk the same one. So how do you maintain the bonds of friendship when you leave the small world called high school and enter the big world known as the rest of your life? It’s not easy and you will lose a few people along the way but there are some things you can do to keep your friendships alive in spite of the exciting changes you are about to experience.

Stay in touch.
This is the first and most important thing you must do in order to maintain your high school friendships. More...

Prioritize your friendships.
When you move beyond the corridors of your high school you can count on a few very exciting changes in your social world, you will form new kinds of relationships with others and what you come to see as your peer group will expand and evolve. More...

Blend the old with the new.
When you move out in to the world and form new bonds with new people it can feel like loving in two bizarre parallel universes, each starring you on the same stage but neither one fitting with the other. More...

Friendships are complicated but important parts of everybody’s life but good friendships are worth the effort it takes to maintain them. Don’t become discouraged when once easy going friendships suddenly become major emotional undertakings or when once important friendships suddenly seem trivial. The evolution of relationships is a normal part of your growing up and growing apart is the most common evolution that friendships experience. There is a saying, a life motto if you will, that fits here and you should think of it whenever you are feeling blue about a lost or changed friendship. It goes like this; “In this life only three things matter; how well did you live, how well did you love and how well did you learn to let go?” Life is about change and even difficult changes can be positive. Friends will come and go but all will teach you something about who you are and who you want to be. If you lose a friend rather than focusing on the temporary void this may leave in your life reflect on what you have gained by having had that friend in your life at all. It can ease the pain of losing a friend to assign it value and make the memory of the friendship a part of who you are deep down inside.

For more on after high school friendships see: How to Stay Best Friends After High School

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