Making friends gets harder after school. Say yes to the invite you’d normally skip.

School hands you friendship for free and nothing afterwards does. Hundreds of people your age in one building, five days a week, is an arrangement that never happens again, and once it ends every friendship has to be built out of deliberate effort against a schedule. The habit of saying yes is the part that transfers.

Accept one invitation this month that you would normally decline, and go even if you only stay an hour. Then do the harder half and suggest the next thing yourself. Practising now means you will still know how at twenty-five, when nobody organises your social life for you.