Friends You Make in College
Experiencing Life Side-By-Side
BY DEVNA PANDA
Growing up, the comfortable and suburban setting of my childhood had always felt all-encompassing, a world with which all of my thoughts began and ended. Having had the same group of friends my entire life, I felt wholly understood in our tight-knit circle. Any experience I had was an experience we shared. Anyone I knew was someone that they also knew. We had practically lived the same lives. I had never questioned that friendship could manifest itself any differently.
When I first came to college, I was overwhelmed by all of the different people I was meeting, which is the case for many freshmen. Previously, I never had to question whether there were certain types of people I naturally gravitated toward or felt a stronger connection with. My friends had been shaped by shared childhood experiences rather than the intentionality of a young adult. While that had been an incredibly positive experience for me, it seemed that I now had a choice: I could choose who I was surrounded by during these formative years.
With each person I met, I realized how unique everyone’s stories were. No longer was I surrounded by people who had lived the same life. Though the comfort of that notion was gone, I was surprised by how much the world could contain. Each floor of each dormitory was teeming with aspirations and insecurities alike that were hyper-specific to the individuals holding them. I had been so consumed by the environment that I had grown up in, but I could now see the vast expanse of experiences I had yet to experience stretching out in front of me.
Over the first few months of my freshman year, I began collecting the various characters that would make up the plot of my life over the following years. I met students from various parts of the world, spanning from Egypt to Lithuania, to whom I remember sheepishly admitting that my parents were thankfully a mere twenty minutes away. I became acquainted with artists, dancers, poets, figure-skaters, and gymnasts — each person had spent eighteen years of life engaging in completely different experiences. Some people enjoyed EDM and went to raves in the city and others took pleasure in reading Voltaire and technical books on mathematical philosophy. I was utterly enchanted by my new environment, soaking in all that the individuals around me had to offer.
Once I began spending more time with the girls I now call my best friends, I began to realize the true depth of what it means to share a friendship with someone in this stage of life.
Most recently, a close friend of mine had the misfortune of tripping in a dark, crowded basement and splitting her chin on the cement floor. A harmless night of fun had turned into a tearful trip to the emergency room. As the night gave way to morning and we sat in the waiting room criticizing the American healthcare system, I could not help but think that this was what it meant to be a friend.
Hanya Yanagihara, an American novelist, said, “Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around them in return.”
For the first time in my life, I am truly experiencing what it means to witness all parts of someone — dismal and bright — and love them regardless, having them extend the same courtesy to me in return. I am realizing what it means to hold someone’s hand as we experience life side-by-side rather than through a mirror. I am learning what it means to share responsibility for another person’s well-being.
Wholeheartedly appreciate the friends you make in college; they are the friends who get to see you create the version of yourself that you’d like to be — unfettered by the impositions of childhood or the responsibilities of true adulthood.