My girlfriend and I started dating during that strange period at the tail-end of high school when it seems all the seniors have either been accepted or rejected by their college of choice, and left mostly to their own devices as they countdown the remaining days before summer. 

Despite being on the brink of a massive change for both of us, my girlfriend and I didn’t think anything of it. After all, we still had a few months left before the end of school, and an entire summer before we started college. 

It wasn’t until the last two weeks before the start of my first semester at the University that we really discussed what we were going to do about our relationship when we both left for school. Friends and family had warned us each repeatedly that a long-distance relationship, especially during freshman year, was a poor choice. According to most people, breaking up was the only viable option. We decided, however, that we both wanted to make it work, so we would give it a chance and hope for the best. 

It’s never been easy, but since then we have been dating for over two years.

My hope in writing this isn’t to convince anyone to commit to a long-distance relationship while away at college, only to share what I have learned from my experiences and the experiences of friends in the same position. Most importantly though, because very few people ever said this to me: It is possible to be happy in a long-distance relationship while away at college.

For me, what was difficult during the first few weeks of school was the negative attitude many people had toward long-distance relationships. It was a while before I met many people who were doing long-distance like me, but every few days I met someone who had just broken up with their girlfriend before leaving for school. Several people I met were genuinely confused by our decision to stay together. It’s easy to say that the opinions of others shouldn’t matter, but because my girlfriend and I had just started going long-distance, it was hard for me to stay confident in our ability to make it work when so many people were telling me I had made a mistake. I felt like I was the only one with a girlfriend back home. Of course, this phase was temporary. The more time I spent at school, the more people I met in long-distance relationships. It seems obvious to me now, but I wasn’t alone. Remember, there are plenty of people here who are just as worried about the exact same things when it comes to their long-distance relationships and finding people in the same situation helps tremendously.

Around the same time, my girlfriend and I began planning her first visit down to the University, as well as visiting plans in general. Because neither of us brought a car to college, we had a lot of questions about how best to travel to visit each other. There are multiple ways to get from campus to O’Hare International Airport, Chicago and the suburbs, but the two relatively cheap methods we typically use are shuttle buses and the Amtrak trains. In terms of shuttles, the Peoria Charter Coach Company and Suburban Express both cost upward of $30 for a one-way trip from Chicago to Champaign. The trip can take anywhere from three to four hours depending on the number of stops in between. A cheaper and sometimes faster alternative is the Amtrak train that makes stops at the Illinois Terminal located in downtown Champaign. The cost of a one-way trip is between $16 and $20. Getting to the terminal is easy, as several bus routes from the bus system, Champaign-Urbana MTD, make stops at the Illinois Terminal including the Yellowhopper, Green, Teal and Blue routes.

My girlfriend and I try to visit each other at least once a month, although that shouldn’t be seen as the ideal amount. Every long-distance couple I’ve talked to has a different visitation schedule dependent on the distance between them and how well they cope with it. I have friends who go months without seeing their significant other, as well as friends who always seem to have theirs over. Visits are an extremely flexible part of dating long-distance and probably the most rewarding. For me, it’s really hard to describe the feeling of seeing her get off that bus after two months apart.

Like anything however, the reward only comes after putting in the work, and believe me, long-distance relationships are hard work. The trying times are the weeks and months between visits when both of us are burnt out and busy with school, work, friends and parties. We usually text and talk on the phone daily, but during these times its easy to forget to text back, easy to get angry with each other, easy to start a fight that doesn’t get resolved for days because all we have are phone calls. If anything in this column is worth reading, it’s that staying in touch is incredibly important and takes some getting used to at that distance. I hate talking on the phone and dealing with dropped Skype sessions, but I’ve gotten used to it to keep things from falling apart. I learned to communicate better, instead of assuming she knew how I was feeling about school, work and her.

It’s weird to think about, but I honestly don’t think my girlfriend and I would have lasted more than a few months if we had met earlier in high school. Believe it or not, going long-distance made our relationship more solid than it ever would have been otherwise. I’m sure we’re not alone in that, and I’m also sure that long-distance relationships aren’t for everyone. I’ve seen them flourish and fall apart in equal measure, but I just wanted to make it clear, if you both want it to work, it’s going to work, even if no one says it’s going to.

Scott is a junior in Fine and Applied Arts. He can be reached at [email protected].