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In high school you talked with your friends only in school. If you knew the person well enough you’d get your parents to like their parents so you two could hang out on the weekends. Most of the time one would go to the other’s house to watch movies or walking around the mall for hours trying to pick up people of the opposite gender. They were there for you to talk to but they hardly ever were involved in the situation.

College is much different. Generally your freshman year friends live the same dorm as you and most times on the same floor. These people become your closest friends or your biggest allies. Neighbors who you liked at the beginning of the semester may decide half-way through that you slept with their friend’s crush (both of which live on the same floor as you) but they don’t have any facts so when you ask them why they hate you they don’t actually tell you. And the truth is, another girl on the floor, in a drunken stupor, accidentally said your name to your neighbors instead of the actual person who did sleep with him.

Drama between friends is the worst you’ll even encounter. Sometimes one of your friends decides she/he doesn’t like another of your friends and they’re fighting all the time and you three can never hang out in one group. But when there’s not drama, times are fun. You become a big family, going out to parties together and taking care of one another when things get tough. People start to become a part of the hard times. It’s easier to talk to them about it because they were there to witness it.

Your familial connections begin to change, too. When you’re at home you hate being around your family all the time and having to ask them for rides places. They’re bugging you about homework and getting to bed on time and staying out past curfew. Once you get to college, everything becomes different. Your parents are never around to tell you what to do. They’re phone calls or IMs away, asking you if you’ve done your homework. And it’s easy to fib to them. You can say yes and they can’t ask to see it.

Most times you begin to miss your family more and the distance between you and them is frustrating. Being without home-cooked steak or good salad makes you quickly wish you could be back at home. And the bond between you and your family grows. You talk more about adult things instead of the petty drama of high school. It feels good to make them proud of you when you get a 3.0.

The interactions with teachers becomes different, too. In high school the teachers were everywhere. They’d show up in the lunch room, eating a sandwich, or in study hall talking to another teacher. They could teach other subjects besides the core classes. You could also become close to a certain teacher and feel safe to talk about anything with him or her. In a university you hardly see them outside of the classroom. Some live an hour or more away, so they don’t stick around much after classes. It’s also harder to talk to them because they mostly lecture at you and then leave. And if you do become close with some of your professors, they generally regard you more like an adult and open up more.

Social interaction with friends, family and professors changes quickly once you get to college. Living in close quarters with people, being away from loved ones and dealing with odd teaching styles is something new to deal with. But it makes the college experience more challenging and rewarding with people who will stick with you your whole life.