In November, I introduced an upcoming 4-part series in a post entitled Bits & Pieces (An Inspired By Song! Series).  The first installment entitled So Many Faces In And Out Of My Life  followed shortly thereafter.  If you haven't read it yet, I would suggest doing so, as the story continues where the last installment left off.  This is part 2 of the series...Some Will Last, Some Will Just Be Now And Then.

The chosen path for each of us may have varied as we left high school, but the one thing that we all had in common was that we were all about to start experiencing "real life."  In "real life," you don't have that same comfort level of seeing the same people over and over again.  This new reality required some getting used to, although most of us probably didn't realize that this change was happening until later on in our lives because reflection is a difficult thing to do when you are living in the moment. 

Throughout the years leading up to high school graduation, we were all accustomed to seeing the same faces day after day.  The confines of high school helped to create this dynamic.  We were exposed to our fellow classmates on a regular basis, even though we weren't always in the same classes. 

After graduation, all of this familiarity came to a grinding halt.  In fact, a number of the people that were a part of my life everyday for many years suddenly disappeared in the blink of an eye, and wouldn't resurface again for ten years, until our high school reunion.  However, there were those that chose not to attend our high school reunion, so they basically were reduced to being nothing more than a fading memory.

I didn't come to this realization until many years later.  Quite frankly, there aren't many recent high school graduates that spend a great deal of time wondering which people they may never see ever again.  It's probably a bit too much for the average teenager to wrap their mind around.

The summer after senior year was spent hanging out with my close friends.  The time spent together after that summer would be limited to college breaks.  It was a great summer - a perfect buffer between my youth and the beginning of the rest of my life.  During that summer, I would see many of my fellow classmates at the beach and at the numerous graduation parties that seemed to last right through August.  I don't think that any of us truly realized how much our lives were about to change when the summer ended though. 

By the time that I got through orientation week of college (the week before all of the classes started), I had already started to distance myself from my high school days, and started looking forward to my future.  While it was a new and unfamiliar experience, I can honestly say that orientation week was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life.  It was over twenty years ago, but I can still remember it as if it happened last week. 

Oddly enough, the four years that I spent in college after orientation week have all kind of blended together into one big memory.  There will always be certain moments that are more memorable than others, but for the most part, the experience is filed away in my memory bank under the heading "college."  It was a time that was made up of a great deal of change, and it set the course for the rest of my life.  Ultimately, my college years are the foundation that this 4-part series is built upon. 

Once orientation week ended, and the classes began, so did the process of seeing people come in and out of my life.  Although my college campus wasn't as big as some of the bigger universities, it was still considerably larger than my high school.  The enormity of it all is exaggerated by the fact that I was really a part of the overall student body, and not just my class.  In high school, I knew everyone in my grade, but my interaction with people from other grades was restricted, for the most part, to sports, and a few elective classes.

In college, every class was, for all intents and purposes, an elective class.  While there were some classes that were predominantly freshmen classes, most of the classes were filled with a mixture of students ranging from freshmen to seniors.  In high school, the classes were all given in one building, and all of the classes took place during the same block of time.   In college, classes were spread out over a whole campus, and each person had their own unique time schedule.  Because college courses weren't conducive to socializing, the majority of the time was spent learning in a room filled mostly with strangers, which is the polar opposite of high school learning.

It was, however, easy to meet people in the dorm - a social structure that was comparable to high school.  Outside the comfort zone of the dorm, the college environment really crystallized the significance of the overall message of this series thus far... "so many faces in and out of my life, some will last, some will just be now and then."

It felt like the bonds that were created during orientation week would never end, but they did.  It was only a week, so it seemed reasonable that this would happen, particularly when actual course work was thrown into the mix.  The overwhelming workload greatly changed the dynamic that we experienced during orientation week. 

However, you would think that the bonds created in the dorm would have had staying power because they were built on being together for an entire school year, but they also didn't last.  Sure, some of the friendships were carried over to the following year, but once people started moving to different dorms, things just weren't the same.  It was as if the magic of the moment was only meant to last for the duration of the school year, and then it was gone forever. 

Good friends became casual friends, casual friends became acquaintances, and acquaintances became non-entities over the course of a summer.  This process repeated itself throughout all of the years of college.  Some friends graduated, some transferred to other schools and some didn't make it because of their academic shortcomings.  Many old friends were replaced by new ones, although some lasted through the years. 

It's sad to say, but the adjustment to the cyclical nature of friendships got easier as the years went by.  I didn't know it at the time, but the cyclical nature of these college friendships was merely an introduction to what was in store for me in the future. 

Coming Soon - Life Is A Series Of Hellos And Goodbyes (part 3 of 4)