One of the most important phases in your life will be the period you spend in college. This period is when you'll transition between student life and life as an adult. Getting an education in college is your top priority, but this phase is also crucial for you socially. If you've read other articles like this one, you'll know that college is the perfect time to build life-long relationships with friends and mentors. After all, if you're taking an automotive enthusiast in an automotive college, it's safe to say you're probably surrounded by people with the same interests as yourself!

The positive influences that you can get from your college friends are plenty, and they're also pretty obvious. For example, your friends in college can influence you to do better and work harder through healthy competition. Trustworthy friends can also be relied on to provide you with honest and constructive feedback, helping you fix weaknesses and mistakes. After graduation, your college friendships are some of the most valuable things you would start your automotive career with.

Unfortunately, not everyone that you meet during this phase of your life will provide you with a positive influence. Whether or not they realise it, some of the friends we make along the way will also influence us in negative ways, which we need to be aware of.

Here are a few ways that our college friends might influence us negatively:

They might pressure you to do things you don't want to do

'Peer pressure' isn't just something that happens in primary or secondary school. It indeed happens in college and even in adult life as well. The difference is now that you're in college, you're old enough to do things that you couldn't do back in school. You're being given more freedom than you've ever experienced before, and you have to learn to be responsible in how you use that freedom. 

A friend might influence you negatively by pressuring you to make unhealthy choices with your new freedom, even if you don't want to do it. They might challenge you, or tease and shame you into doing whatever it is that they're trying to get you to do. 

One example is when it comes to your behaviour on the road. Now that you're in college, you probably have a license to drive a car or ride a motorcycle. Your negative college friends may challenge you to a race, or make fun of you for driving within the speed limit. You know it's dangerous to speed, but the negative influence of your friends can tempt you to go faster than you usually would. 

They make you feel insecure or doubtful

As mentioned earlier, a good friend is one who challenges you through healthy competition and provides you with constructive feedback that makes you better.

Some friends, however, might take things a bit too far. Instead of inspiring you, their behaviour may make you feel insecure or make you doubt yourself. For example, if you were to score lower than them on a test, they may say or do things to make you feel terrible about it. Make no mistake: it is not considered 'healthy competition' if your friends insult or tease you for not doing as good as they are. 

Also, some people may use a person's weaknesses as a reason to criticise them, claiming that they're only giving 'feedback'. Understand this: there is a huge difference between 'constructive criticism' and just plain old criticism. Constructive criticism is when a friend gives you their opinion highlighting both the negatives and positives of what you've done, to encourage you to do better. A good friend who is a positive influence does this to help you improve, not to hurt your feelings.

Friendship with them is only one-sided

Healthy and positive friendships are reciprocal. That means that it's a two-way relationship, with both sides giving and taking for each other's benefit. This kind of friendship provides us with a positive influence by making us feel secure and loved, knowing that we have the support we need as friends.

A friend who is a negative influence is one who only ever takes, expecting others to provide to them, but never offering any friendly support in return. These types of relationships are not really for the best of everyone involved.

What you can do about it

This is the most important thing you need to know about life in general and your social life in particular: you can’t control other people, you can only control yourself. As a young adult, you get to choose what kind of influences you allow into your life; from the movies and videos you watch to the books you read, and especially to the friends you keep. 

There is a well-known saying that a person is the average of the five closest friends they have. We as human beings are influenced by the friends that we keep around us, which is why we need to be careful about who we get close to.

So what do we do if we have friends who influence us negatively? Well, there is no need for any conflicts or arguments. Over time, we should learn to spend less of our time with people who are negative influences, and instead, slowly gravitate towards those who are more positive. Most importantly, we must also check ourselves to make sure that we don’t do any of the negative behaviours mentioned above. Sometimes, we might be doing it without even realising it.

Positive people surround themselves with other positive people so that they can inspire each other. They make each other better through healthy competition and by providing each other with mutual support, exactly as friends should. When you’re a positive person who surrounds yourself with other positive people, you'll learn much more, you'll perform better, and overall you'll just be a much happier person in automotive college.