Long distance and age gaps

I’ll be 18 on saturday and my BF is 16 (17 in 3 months) so we have a year and 3 months age gap. Things like that happen all the time and I for one see no problem with that aspect personally because it’s a good relationship.

Anyways we’re about to go on to 1 year on friday. I leave for college the 14th, the same day he starts school as a junior/senior (I say that because he’s taking 1/2 of his senior classes trying to graduate early.) My school will be 4.5 hours away and I’ll probably only make it back once every two months, if that.

We’ve both talked about it many times and always come back to the conclusion: if either one of us feel like we are at a point where we are sacrificing our lives (social, academic, etc.) that we would talk and reevaluate our options. We were really good friends before our relationship and want to be realistic/conscious of our relationship because even if it doesn’t work out we still want to be friends/ end if amicably if it comes to that.

Really I’m just looking for advice on all the aspects of this post and how to deal with the distance. As well as advice for making sure I don’t hermit in my dorm only speaking to him and not going out and making friends, etc. We see each other at leave twice a week so this will be a big change as you can imagine.

Thanks!