Random Thought: 20

Hello again,

So, I'm going to elucidate on friendships.

When I went to college, I really only kept in touch with a small handful of people from high school. There was Winston, Gina, Kyle, Kristina and Andy, but beyond that, I wasn’t very social with most of the people I had parted ways with. In most cases, it wasn’t personal at all, I was just ready for college and getting out of Tipton, and little by little, I talked to most of my friends less and less.

As Freshman year went on, I hung out with Brittany a few times, Jojo here and there, Gina & Winston came to see me some, and I think I hung out with Erik and Jill once in Currier. But really I was focused on my various new friends. And I assumed that everyone else was doing the same. PS, I had a lot of friends freshman year. This is mostly because I was super-involved on-campus, which makes me laugh now because I think that 99% of all campus orgs are huge wastes of time only intended to pad peoples’ resumes. But it’s like, who cares if you’re in some dumb fraternity? Is that really an attractive quality to the outside world? It still makes me laugh when people think that future employers will care if they are the president of the Bowling Club or whatever.

Anyway it was never like Ok Gina I don’t like you now or anything like that, it was just that I guess I thought it was the natural progression of things. Like if Gina was in town, we’d hang out, but beyond that, I really began to drift apart from my high school friends. I think I’ve only talked to Amanda Hembry twice throughout all 4 years of college...even though senior year we were kind of inseparable. And though I did miss many people that I didn't see anymore, I had taken from popular opinion that people leave high school, make new friends in college, and these are your new friends, like for life. Then upon happenchance you go home for Christmas and see your old buddy at a bar and you guys catch up over drinks and promise to hang out again soon even though how will that happen because you live 2 hours away from each other.

But really, I honestly thought that, like, my friends I had made in college were my new family. Like, I always assumed that Sam and I would go onto be roommates in grad school someday. Or that Jess and I would both want to get out of Iowa City so badly that we’d up and move to New York to be a younger version of Will and Grace. LIKE FOR EXAMPLE. There’s this episode of Dawson’s Creek (really) where Joey is having a totally believable conversation with her professor, as per usual. And she’s using the appropriate vocabulary for an eighteen year old, and her professor asks her ‘Where do most people make the best friends of their life? And don’t say high school.’ And she answers ‘College.’ Right? Exactly. You’re supposed to go to college and make new friends and have your eyes opened and then be next-door neighbors roommate from freshman year, and marry someone you met in med school or something and blahblahblah. Then go to high school reunions and play catch up.

So, imagine my thought-process now, as I find myself at 22 years old, and I’m more excited to make plans to hang out with various friends from high school than to make new friends in Iowa City...It's so weird, because, like, I used to thrive on meeting new people. I would always strike up conversations with people in class, and go to all these campus events, and over the last four years, I made countless friends and had an absolute blast. But now, the number of people from high school I hang out with is pretty on par with collegians...if not greater than. Over the last year, I’ve found myself joyfully reconnected to Steph, Erik, Tyler, Gina, Jojo, Caden, Meritt & Jackie. And I just made plans to hang out with Liz when I get back, and I’m really excited, because I absolutely love Liz!

Hanging out with Steph is like, such a highlight of any week or even month, and I totally hope that we are still hanging out bi-monthly ten years from now, because I love her and miss her so much and I have more fun with her than I can ever possibly imagine. I just spent 3 days in Venice with Meritt and we’re already planning on travelling somewhere together soon. I see her more than I ever see Winston, Andy, or most of the people I used to think were my new college ‘family’ or whatever. Jackie and I are fucking going to travel to Bali together for 4 freaking days and I have talked with her via Skype and blogs more often than I’ve facebooked any of my friends from Iowa since I’ve been gone (sans Jason).

On the one hand, it’s kind of weird, because like, I really feel you shouldn’t be so reliant on friends from high school to fill up your time…because I mean, coming from a small town, there should be like 6 billion other people in this world who are cooler than the people you graduated with. And you don’t want to go to your 10 year reunion and be like ‘I still hang out with everyone from high school.’ Right? Like that’s the stuff that movies are made of. But at the same time, it’s like, these people that I love and care about are freaking sweet. Jackie is living in Singapore right now and will always be one of the funniest and most opinionated people I’ve ever met, and she makes more of an effort to be aware of the problems facing our country and world than a lot of people I know who are in grad school. Erik just got back from spending a summer in Japan and I’ve never met another guy who has as much in common with me in terms of taste in TV Shows or Movies (sans Jason).

Tyler is also someone who I’ve always had great respect for and even in high school, I wanted him to be Homecoming King and Class President and Valedictorian and everything because he was a cool fucking guy, and he still is! Only cooler because now he’s lived all over the US AND Italy and can handle his alcohol. Gina has worked her way through college and is about to move to Chicago before pursuing a master’s degree. Like me, she wants to succeed and educate herself and see bigger and better things than Iowa too. It’s like, why wouldn’t I want to be friends with these people?

Or I was just talking to my boyfriend over Skype about Meritt. Like, in high school, Meritt and I were never best friends. But, we were pretty good friends. Like we hung out more often than not, and as we were both on the Swim Team and in Concert Choir and the Musical every year, we were pretty well acquainted. We always had inside jokes and I felt pretty comfortable around her, and vice versa, I think. But at the same time, we were never close enough that I thought we’d be lifelong friends. But I always felt like she was someone that I could be lifelong friends with. She has all the qualities of someone I would love to be good friends with, ya know? Like she’s super fun and nice and smart and talented and she never seemed small town, though that’s what we both were I’m sure, and now that she's gone to college she, like me, realizes just how much better it is to not be small-town. And she has goals and is driven to succeed and probably will! Whenever I thought about her in my first few years of college, I would really hope that she was happy. Well, a couple years later, we're…like…pretty good friends, I think. And it makes me really happy.

It’s kind of the same with Jackie. Like, we were pretty much Becca & Tucker from Flash Forward in middle school and freshman year, and, again, as we were both in choir and swimming and musicals, we just had lots of time to get to know each other and be presences in each other’s lives. If anything, we always had similar senses of humor. In other words, we didn't like to take things too seriously and we both liked to quote movies and just have fun. For different reasons (mostly, I think I just didn’t care enough about preserving my friendships, which I didn’t realize until far too late in life), we drifted apart and hardly were social toward the end of high school. Then I think before February of this year, we randomly hung out once over Christmas Break of sophomore year. But even so, I always had a really great opinion of her and I always looked back on the time we spent in EIGHT AND NINTH GRADE as being a really great time. Like, honestly, I would look back on this time when I was 14 years old and think ‘god that was so fun, I miss her.’

And now it’s just so crazy because I’ve really come to question the importance getting out there and making tons of new lifelong friends in college. I mean, in theory, yes, it makes sense. If you only ever are friends with your friends from high school and are still surrounded by the same thoughts and ideas and attitudes as you were then, then yeah, you probably missed out. This is one reason I'm glad I didn't go to UNI. I fear I might have just stayed too close to my friends who went there and not venture out, and even if I did, like everyone who goes there is from a small Iowa town. But to be fair, Iowa is all kids from Chicago, and the leftovers are all kids from Iowa. And really, going to any school in Iowa is going to be a lot like high school, in that it’s going to be white, middle class, Protestant, etc. But I’m still thankful for the fact that I did make friends with people who weren’t from Iowa. Jess, Ailyn, Kaisa, Patrick, Fernando have all helped to open my eyes in one way or another…even if only ever so slightly. Anyway, I’m getting off-track.

I’m just saying that even if I don’t have many friends at school now, I’m still thankful for the relationships I do or did have (even the 75% of friends who turned out to be assholes, whom I'm mostly referring to throughout this entry), because I do have good friends, and there are people from college that I hope to get to know really well someday, perhaps when I get back, or in the future. But oddly, I’m currently in a very surprisingly enjoyable place by striking up these once-retired relationships from high school, and I’m more excited about spending time and re-forming bonds with these old friends than any kind of opportunity to make friends that a campus org or class could provide me at Iowa…and I’m very okay with the notion of maintaining the status quo in my life for the time being. Not to say that don't also enjoy hanging out with the cool people that ARE in my life from Iowa either.

When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. I mean, once I leave Iowa City, I’m not gonna have many reasons to come back. I’m not gonna be coming back for Homecoming to stumble over drunks, or to hopefully work here or go to grad school or anything like that…but I will most likely return to Tipton every now and then. If I'm going to commune with my fellow Iowa alum, I'd rather meet in Chicago or fly to so and so's new home on the coast or whatever. But anyway, my parents live in Tipton, my grandparents do too, etc, and if Erik is home for the weekend or Jill wants to hang out or something, I’m totally down.

So again, I reiterate my point from the previous point: College really has become more of a period of transition, rather than a new beginning. And I’m thankful for my time here, and those that I’ve met along the way, especially people that I still really care about very much, like Jess and Maggie and the Allens and Hannah and my roommates…but I’m very excited to see what my life will be like in, say, ten years. Or twenty. Who will be in my life? Will I look back on college as the golden years of my life, as I always thought I would? Or high school? Or the soon-after college years where I have this interesting group of friends from both? Or who knows…maybe that title will be reserved for my various trips abroad :) It's just funny how things never turn out the way you think they will.

PS I’m on a bus whose driver is driving as though he has a death wish, and Cher’s Believe is on the radio. This song is officially the most common song on the radio while transporting from one town to another in southern Europe.