Friendship in the Age of College and Chaos

By Angelica Ruiz

Living in New York City, we’re all told we’re in the city—just one big, chaotic, glittering metropolis. Except when you’re trying to make plans with friends. Suddenly, Queens might as well be in another time zone, Brooklyn feels like it's on another continent, and Staten Island... does that ferry even exist in real time? Getting five college students from different boroughs to meet up is nearly impossible. It’s something that isn’t measured in miles; it’s measured in minutes (or hours, depending on MTA delays, which let’s face it, are inevitable).

This past summer, my friends and I were unstoppable. We weren’t just a group of friends—we were a full-blown unit, bound together by laughter, spontaneity, and a shared determination to make every moment count. We’d hop from place to place like the city was our personal playground, spending hours under the sun, kicking back, and talking about everything and nothing. 

There were nights when we didn’t really care about the destination but rather the feeling of being together. One specific night we went all around Brooklyn, ending the night in Dumbo under the glistening city skyline, laughing uncontrollably. 

And let's not talk about how we managed to visit almost every borough in a day (we didn’t get to the Bronx). 

And then, there was the diner. You know, the kind of place where time seems to stand still, where we’d sit in a booth, order fries, and talk like the night would never end. Conversations flowed endlessly—dreams, fears, ridiculous hypotheticals—and before we knew it, another night had slipped through our fingers.

It was a good summer. Actually, it was an amazing summer. It's the kind of summer that leaves you with an ache in your chest when it’s over.

But then school started.

Let me tell you, once our semester schedules hit, it was like the NYC geography we’d ignored all summer suddenly became our biggest and worst enemy. A 45-minute trip to Brooklyn now feels like planning a cross-country road trip. 

Queens to Staten Island? Forget it; that might as well be international travel. 

The summer hangouts? Gone. Until next summer, at least. 

Now, it's all a painstaking calculus of class schedules, work, and commutes that seem insurmountable. 

And the worst part? We’re technically in the same city!

Everyone talks about the difficulty of long-distance relationships, but no one talks about the real test of long-distance friendships. At least in long-distance relationships, you have time zones and oceans to blame. Here, it’s just the unpredictable train service and piles of homework. So now, instead of weekend hangouts or park days, it’s text messages at weird hours and endless attempts at scheduling meet-ups that never seem to align.

And it sucks. Not in the way that makes you roll your eyes and move on, but in a way that leaves you feeling strangely hollow. It’s the kind of suckiness where you can scroll through your summer photos, already feeling nostalgic for those days when your biggest problem was deciding where to eat. 

We didn’t even realize it, but somewhere between June and September, we developed separation anxiety—for each other.

But there’s something oddly poetic about it, too. We’re all growing up, right? Navigating life in one of the busiest cities on earth, trying to juggle school, work, and the friendships that mean the most to us. 

I mean, how can you not find the humor in it all? New York City, the city that never sleeps, but somehow, we’re too busy to meet up. Only in NYC can your best friend live in the same zip code but feel worlds away because neither of you can spare the commute. 

And yet, despite it all, there’s something we can’t shake. No matter how long it’s been since our last group hang, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that we’re still here for each other. We may be separated by boroughs and schedules, but we’ve figured out how to stay connected.

So maybe the boroughs are bigger than we thought, and maybe our lives are getting busier. But the love? The memories of last summer, the shared laughter, and the sense that no matter how hard it is, we’ll still find our way back to each other? That’s still here. We’re just learning how to make it work in a city that never stops moving.