Easy Ways to Stay in Touch with Your College Friends

Whether you and your Tandem roommates have left Davis for the summer or for the foreseeable future, there are lots of ways to keep in touch. In ye olden days, our parents had to write letters and…gasp…WAIT a week or more for a response. We’re living in the age of instant communication in the form of texting and making our own instant airline reservations. (Our parents had to go to a travel agent and buy tickets that had funky red ink on them – don’t ask.)

CollegeFashion.net has suggested five fun and easy ways to stay in touch with the ones you love. Here are the first three on their list. Click on the link for the rest of the article.

1. Use your smart phones.

Checking out your friends’ Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, and Instagram photos is pretty much a no-brainer, but there are so many more awesome ways to utilize cool apps on your smartphones to keep in touch with your girlfriends.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Snapchat by now. I like this app because it encourages silly, personal photos and takes just a few seconds to show your friends that you’re thinking about them. My favorite Snapchats to send involve me taking pictures of myself making really ugly and goofy faces, but it would be neat to send group shots with other friends or even a quick pic of something funny or ironic you encountered.

Vine is a really cool app too – it does a good job of capturing the overall feel of an event, night, or party. You’ll feel like you’re right by your BFF’s side during any special night she remembers to film!

My favorite way to use my iPhone to keep in touch with my besties from college is by having a group text with my three closest friends. It’s a good way to share news with multiple people at once, plus it’s the next best thing to having a girl talk session over brunch like the old days!

The GroupMe app is cool because you can turn alerts on and off, which is very convenient if you have a super chatty group of friends who like to text throughout the workday. The downside about GroupMe is that I’ve found it drains your cell phone battery insanely fast. For me, good old fashioned group text seems to work the best.

A few months ago, my friends started to group text each other a picture of where we’re at or what we’re doing every single Friday night at 11 PM sharp. Over the weeks, we all got super creative with the photos we’d send, and it’s almost turned into a silent competition over when can send the funniest picture to the group! I love this new tradition because it’s a fast and fun way to feel like a part of each other’s lives. Plus, it give you something to look forward to all week.

2. Go back to college for big events.

Are there any huge events at your college that alumni, families, and devout fans all roll in for? These weekends are the perfect landmark events to coordinate a campus visit with your friends – plus, many of your other friends and acquaintances will probably be in your college town that weekend, too! Homecoming, graduation, and sorority initiations are all good events, but my favorite weekends to plan a group rendezvous are big football games.

I went to the University of Oklahoma, and the first weekend in October, it practically feels like the entire Sooner nation drives down to Dallas to play the University of Texas. Everyone – parents, alumni, students, faculty, die-hard fans, and casual fans who just want to party – goes to Dallas, wrecks havoc uptown on Friday night, gets sick from eating too many corn dogs at the fair on Saturday, and either celebrates their win or commiserates their loss downtown on Saturday night.

Yes, Oklahoma/Texas weekend is a long-time tradition that I’ve grown to cherish. I can’t imagine ever not going – so, my best girlfriends and I still meet up in Dallas to celebrate the weekend together.

What sort of long time traditions does your college have? Is it a basketball rivalry, a holiday weekend, or a big alumni event? Make the effort to go back and visit. In high school, it’s weird (and kind of creepy) for alumni to go back and visit too frequently, but that does not hold true in college. Never be afraid to relive your glory days with your best friends every now and then!

3. Visit them in their new cities.

You’ve got your big girl job and you’re living in your big girl apartment now. Unfortunately, this also implies that you’ve got to pay your big girl rent, and funnel money into your big girl savings account. While I’ve never had more cash flow in my entire life, it also seems like I’ve never had to be more careful with how I spend my money. I’ll be the first one to tell you that finding the right way to spend and save post-graduation isn’t easy.

However, I can tell you that I’ve never in my life regretted biting the bullet and spending money on gas or a plane ticket to visit one of my close friends who lives out of town.

Not only is it a great opportunity to travel, but it will probably be less expensive than a regular vacationbecause you’ll likely be able to stay at your friend’s apartment and she’ll have easy access to transportation. It’ll be fun getting to meet her new boyfriend, seeing where she works, checking out her new home, and meeting her new friend crew. You never know – you might end up loving the place so much, you’ll consider relocating!

To save money on transit, look at sites like Travelocity or Orbitz for inexpensive flights. If you sign up with a working email address, they’ll periodically send you ridiculously good deals on flights from your hometown to other places in the country. Once, I got a round trip flight from Tulsa to Austin for $85! Another way to save money is to carpool with other friends, or use frequent flyer miles you’ve saved up. One of my close friends from college is a traveling consultant, and instead of flying her home every weekend, her company lets her fly anywhere in the country for a weekend getaway! That’s proved to be super handy for her social life.

Whether it takes a long road trip or a quick flight, you’ll never regret splurging on a trip to check out their world.