As the school year comes to an end, you may be worried that the friendships you’ve made in college will slowly fade away, especially with distance involved. Yet, there are a lot of ways to prevent friendships from dying out throughout the summer, even if you do have to get a little creative.
Here are five ways to keep in touch with your college friends during the summer:
Become pen-pals
While this may sound old-fashioned, it’s a very cute form of communication to start up this summer besides using your iPhone. All you have to do is find a piece of paper lying around your house and write what’s on your mind to your friends. Whether it’s existential thoughts or random people you encounter throughout the summer, writing letters back and forth creates a new kind of intimacy between you and your friends that you may not have experienced before via text. Make sure to know your friends’ addresses though, or else this method will become confusing of course for various reasons.
Plan to meet up in person
With long-distance friends, it may be worth your summer to plan a road trip to see them, as long as you have the proper permission from family. By planning to meet up before summer starts, you’ll establish this expectation within your friendship that it will happen. Once summer hits, start mapping out your destination, as well as any excursions you’d like to do in your friend’s hometown or state. Also, keep in mind the expenses of doing this method, as you’ll want to have enough money to enjoy your time with friends. All in all, this is a more spontaneous way to keep in touch with friends, especially if you’re an upperclassman.
FaceTime on a regular basis
As much as technology can hinder one’s summer experience at times, the easiest option to connect with friends from college is by far FaceTime. With FaceTime, you can set up a weekly or monthly schedule of when to call your friends. It also allows you to do group calls, making it easier to see everyone and catch up. By setting up a schedule, you’ll want to keep checking in on your friends the more you set up FaceTime calls, as well as find the motivation to keep in touch even when it feels hard. FaceTime also is efficient and usually works well, especially with long distances and time zones.
Virtual presentation or movie night
Similar to FaceTime, you could set up a Zoom call with friends this summer to do a virtual presentation or movie night, which has recently gone viral because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With these, all you have to do is find a time and day that works for all of your friends, ensuring that everyone can participate. Then, everyone makes a presentation via Google Slides or Word Powerpoint, tailoring it to their friend group. If you’re going for a movie night, you can go all out and make a bracket or survey to see what film everyone wants to watch as well. Lastly, grab some snacks, find a comfortable spot in your home and allow yourself to unwind and reconnect with friends from all over.
Create a group text chain
In a world that is mostly digital, almost everyone is using their phones to text someone else, especially friends and family. If you don’t already have a group chat with your college friends, make one before you all part ways. This option will then help you all stay connected, as you can literally text them every day about how much you miss them. You can also use this to set up times to meet or call throughout the summer, making it a lot easier to form a schedule similar to FaceTime.
