Work Relationships vs Friendships

Something I have recently noticed is how different friendships came be, depending on where the friendship originated. For example, at school you may think you have loads of friends, and you'll be "best friends forever", but how many do you really keep in contact with? Can you remember the names of all the people in you're primary school class? Or even secondary school tutor group? How many people have you lost contact with that you thought you'd be friends with forever?
I fear the same goes for University. The people you live with, people on your course, people you meet on a night out: Friendships are so easy to form, yet so difficult to maintain.

My own personal experience, is that out of all the people I've met whilst at Uni, I can only think of maybe 5 or 6 whom I will truly try to keep as friends after I graduate. These are a mixture of people I've lived with and people off my course, but considering how many people I currently know, it is a small percentage whom I will attempt to keep in my life. This is not to say that I don't want to keep in contact from people I currently know, but from previous experience, I wonder how many people, in 10 years time, will still be in contact with, or even remember the names of, people they currently class as friends.

There are several types of friends: childhood friends, college/university friends, work friends, and social friends. These types of friends rarely mix in most cases, except at birthday parties, and some last longer than others. For example, I am still friends with a girl I've known since I was 5, but I cannot remember the names of all my friends from school, because we all went our separate ways to different colleges or universities. Some friends may be both college friends and work friends, as is also the case for me.

In my opinion, with my work friends, most of them will remain my friends until I leave that place of work, There will only be a small number whom I will keep in contact with. This is also the case for University. In the situation I find myself in, I work very closely with everyone on my course for WINOL, and I would class myself as "friends" with several of them, but I've realised it's important not to confuse friends with colleagues, or work associates. This is where the difference between work relationships and friendships come in. Work relationships, as the name instigates, are people you work with and form friendships with, which only really apply to working in close proximity to them. Alot of people find that once out of work, they have very little in common with each other, and so when one person leaves, the friendship disintegrates.

It doesn't help at University when people come from all areas of the country, meet new people on thir course, live with new people and form friendships with them, and 3 years down the line they all go off to their respective hometowns, promising to keep in contact. But, as expected, life gets in the way, and friendships fall apart, when eventually one wonders "I wonder what happened to that Jo Bloggs I used to know".

If you've actually managed to read this far, instead of rambling on about friendships and work friends and all that jazz, I'm going to point out a solution to stop the afforementioned from happening. It would appear that the best way to maintain friendships is social networking. With everybody on Facebook and Twitter, it has become a lot easier to keep in contact with old friends.

I think an important message in this long and tedious blog is to treasure your friendships, and the memories you make along the way, because they may not last forever.