No friends in PA school
I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something like this after PA school, because I don’t understand what happened and it’s been really upsetting me.
During didactic year, I thought I had a group of friends in my cohort. We studied together, sat next to each other, texted, etc. I personally never really liked studying in groups, so I didn’t participate in group study sessions as much as some of them did, but we still talked regularly and hung out occasionally outside of school. Obviously during clinical year we weren’t together every day anymore because everyone was at different rotation sites, but we still kept in contact. 2 of my "closest" friends would text me almost every day asking questions about rotations, EORs, PACKRAT, studying, or just random school related things. Sometimes we would have pretty long conversations, and I would genuinely go out of my way to give detailed answers and help them however I could. What has confused and hurt me the most is what happened when we were finally all back together in person for our last week of school. We all were together doing capstones, final exams, graduation practice and suddenly it felt like these people could not have cared less that I existed. That when it was clear to me they all had gotten closer with each other and basically I was not in the friend circle any longer. They would all hang out and do things together without ever inviting me. There was clearly a separate GC and nobody cared if i was included. I dont understand why these people I use to call my friends treat me like a stranger when we were finally together in person. Graduation made it 10x worse. Everyone had their exclusive group of friends to take pics with, sit with, talk to, comment on each other's posts saying how much they love each other, how grateful they are that PA school gave them their best friend, how proud they are of each other without even acknowledging my posts.
It hurts because it feels like confirmation of what I experienced in person during that last week and graduation. It's not really about wanting an Instagram or Facebook comment. It's seeing someone who was texting me constantly a few weeks ago enthusiastically supporting and celebrating everyone else while seemingly pretending I don't exist. I don't even want to post about it because I'm scared I'll get little to no engagement from my classmates while everyone else gets tons of comments from each other. I feel like it will just publicly confirm that I'm the person from the cohort who didn't really have anyone. I keep wondering why I somehow got left behind, what's wrong with me to make them not want to include me or care about me. I honestly just feel incredibly lonely and like there's something wrong with me that I'm not seeing. It has made me so depressed and want to unfollow everyone in my cohort because I have this deep sinking feeling every time i see it now. I literally came out of PA school with zero friends meanwhile i see the bonds all my other classmates have made and it makes me extremely sad.
Has anyone had a similar experience in PA school—feeling lonely, like you never really had friends in your cohort, and then feeling even worse anytime there was a group gathering because it only shed light on how little people talked to you or made an effort to include you.
