I had cool friends in high school

I had cool friends in high school, until we graduated and went to different colleges.

I heard it all through my senior year- "The day of graduation was the last time I saw some of my best friends." I didn't believe it would happen to me though. My friends were cool. We would hang out after school in the computer lab, we would have lan parties and watch movies at each other's houses, we had cool conversations on religion, philosphy, and technology, and we could keep in touch through email or ICQ or AIM... but they had different ideas. While most went to Virginia Tech and I to GMU, I still kept in touch. However, they just stopped writing back and eventually I stopped too.

I still write regularly with alot of other friends, which is strange because it was my really good friends who drifted away. What makes it even more strange is how college has seemed to chill everyone's immature snobbiness that high school had been so full of. While walking down the street random people are always asking "What's up?" or "Wanna come with us to a party?" Which I find really cool. I've yet to meet any assholes in the few months I've been here. I know that I will eventually though, but from the amount of people who I've met and are friends with all ready, the number of assholes must be pretty low. Some of the people that I knew from high school but had never spoken to before actually sit down and I'll have conversations with. But what's up with my friends from high school? Is Tech just totally different from GMU? Does Tech, like UVA, just instill a snob attitude into the student body?

I don't think that they're snobs now, maybe they just felt that since we don't goto the same school we're not friends anymore. Perhaps they're mad at me for something, but why completely ignore someone when you're mad at them? You should atleast tell the person you're mad at them. Or maybe they were never really as good as friends as I had thought...

I wonder now if they saw me in a store would they just keep on walking and pretend not to know me...

Of course I'm biased here as a Virginia Tech Hokie, but I'll try to generalize and maybe defend my school a little bit too.

One of the things I heard before I came to Tech as a freshman in 1997 was about how much of a community Tech was. I figured "Sure, OK, that's cool; other schools are probably like that too." And some schools are. But most of the ones I've seen that are as close-knit as VT are small schools (like 1000-1500), where most of the students know each other personally. Some say it's the isolation of this place, way out in the boonies of southwest Virginia, and maybe it is -- whatever the reason, though, being a Hokie isn't just going to classes, having an @vt.edu e-mail address, and spending six fine days per fall in Lane Stadium. It's a mindset.

No, Tech didn't turn your friends into assholes (at least, I hope they didn't become assholes once they got here). Not snobs either -- we leave that job to UVa, because they're really good at it. :) It's really a question of where your, and your friends', closer associations lie. I lost touch with most of my high school friends when I came here -- I've only kept in touch with three or four people (plus my roommate, a HS classmate) from GSGIS through the years, and honestly, that break happened fairly quickly once I got here. I felt like Tech was really my home now (even though I remain a Richmonder), and most of my close friendships quickly became with fellow VT students.

When I've gone back for alumni picnics at my old HS, though, it's like some people never left that environment -- they spend all their college time with their HS friends, even after they've gone their separate directions, so the picnics are just a continuation of social life as it stands every day for them. I enjoy the times I spend with my old friends, sure, but they're not the center of my life anymore. My friends here are.