Oddly enough zero of my current friends were made at college. All of them were either before or after.
Part of the reason is college lacks structured socializing time and I am really bad at unstructured socializing. So it wasn’t helpful at all for making friends. Work has been much easier given you are spending more hours with the same people and there are frequent “team bonding” type events that make it easy to get to know your coworkers.
Another part of the reason is many people go to a different area for college so afterwards you live apart and stop being friends.
This may have been true of your college, at the time you attended, but I don't think the experience generalizes at all. Lots of colleges and universities feature heavily structured socializing time. They may have extensive orientation activities during the first week on campus, before classes begin. This functions as both an ice breaker and team building event within faculties or departments. As part of this process, first years / freshmen / frosh are typically introduced to a host of formal clubs, student organizations, and fraternities/sororities they can join. They will also often participate in orientation activities and be introduced to groups and events within their residence building (or college within a larger university) which adds another layer of structured socialization.
Frankly, I would say that university has the potential to offer the most structured socialization time a person can experience throughout their entire life. Of course, as with any opportunity, the door may be open but it's up to the individual to walk through. Plenty of people go to school and put 100% focus on their studies. They never socialize with anyone and they largely remember school as a time of stress and isolation. Barring specific programs with insane workloads, that was their choice, however.
> Part of the reason is college lacks structured socializing time and I am really bad at unstructured socializing.
That sounds weird. I don't know what the American college experience is like (I just work here), but my experience in Finland was the opposite. I've had difficulties in making friends in adult life, because I'm also bad at unstructured socializing. When I was a student, there were opportunities for structured socializing everywhere. There were something like 250 student organizations in the university, and many of them also had national umbrella organizations, national meetings, and shared activities with similar organizations in other universities.
Same here. I have exactly 1 friend who I know from university, and the only reason we are still in contact is that I met him one day on the street and we found out we had become neighbours.
I have no contact with anybody else from university. I had a few friends at university that I spent a lot of time with studying and partying, but after I graduated I didn't stay in touch with any of them.
Part of the reason is college lacks structured socializing time and I am really bad at unstructured socializing. So it wasn’t helpful at all for making friends. Work has been much easier given you are spending more hours with the same people and there are frequent “team bonding” type events that make it easy to get to know your coworkers.
Another part of the reason is many people go to a different area for college so afterwards you live apart and stop being friends.