Making friends at university is a social minefield. In fact it’s even more nerve-wracking than trying to snare a mate. For if your friends reflect badly on you, this makes the mate-snaring all the more difficult. Not to mention the need to have a pool of fabulous friends to give you alternately crap and good advice when said mate is messing you around. The rules and bonds of friendship are sacred. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.’ There are crimes friends can commit that can be worse than those of a philandering partner and in a matter of moments years of friendship disappear down the toilet.
During my daily fix of Hollywood gossip, declining multiple email offers of Viagra (they know me so well) and choosing the best of several horoscopes that I get sent direct to my email account, I found a blog written by a thirty-something about friendship. Or, as it seemed in her case, a lack thereof. The gist of it was that of her 3 friends, one had moved out of the same transport zone, one had come out and was busy discovering herself and the other had totally outgrown her. So she was after any advice on how to go about meeting and making new friends.
This is tragic on two levels: One, the blogger was essentially asking the wider world to be her friend, or at least tell her where she might find one; and two, instead of actually going out there to make friends, she sat in front of the computer, reinforcing all the anti-social stereotypes that come with being so dependent on the bloody machine in the first place. To be fair, she was clearly scared shitless of re-airing all her dirty laundry. Not that that this the recommended method for making new friends: ‘Hello there, I barely know you but in order for us to have a long and lasting friendship I feel compelled to tell you about my brief stint in hospital and the invasive treatment of my colon.’ This camp of people believe that sooner or later it’s all going to come out anyway and as this new person still doesn’t know them particularly well and wasn’t there when it happened, is prone to being a trifle more judgemental than the galpal circa 2002. So they decide to be done with it, share all the horrid stuff and if the silly mug on the receiving end sticks around, they know they’ve got themselves a true friend. Either that or the silly mug has a fetish.
Thankfully I am not thirty-something, (though as one of my friends kindly pointed out this week my next ‘big’ birthday will be my 30th whereas hers will be her 21st) but alas, I have been on the friendship hamster wheel time and time again.
Contrary to popular belief I did not end up at boarding school because my parents didn’t love me, (at least that’s what they say) it was to provide a bit of stability as I had been to 3 schools in as many years- ah the merry life of the forces. This basically meant that by the age of 12 I was a connoisseur of small talk (read precocious) and had ‘friends’ all over the place. It also meant, though, that by the time I was 14 I had actually become rather cynical. I knew swapping emails was not really going to cut it and despite the endless hours of giggling, note-swapping in class and proud declarations of being BFFs, it was quite depressing to realise I would not be best friends with them forever. Then came the magic of Facebook and so I’m once again in touch with these former BFFs, mainly through the pull of nostalgia and yes, a little bit to do with upping my friend count. Of those I actually still meet rather than just occasionally ‘share’ a wallpost with, it’s alarming how little we have to say to each other. We have nothing in common save our shared history and when it comes down to it, that’s not really enough except for a general bullet-point list from My Life Over The Past 6 Months.
But once my 15 year-old self got used to the bizarre, unique and often invasive proximities of the boarding house, the friends I made there have been and will probably remain some of the best I have ever made. A true measure of friendship is, we discovered, daring someone to get into their trunk to see if they fit, closing it and throwing them down the stairs and still talking to you afterwards. We also realised by the end of 6th form that really we had very little in common except that our parents lived in a country far from where we had been deposited. But unlike our ‘pre-big-school’ friendships we had a few more life experiences and those were strong enough, or scarring enough, to keep us together. (What happens in the House, stays in the House. That kind of thing.)
So then we get to Fresher’s Week. Unsurprisingly, I can’t really remember what happened, or how I met the people I now consider my friends. It seems that I woke up one morning and there they were. And for the more salacious-minded of you, I don’t mean literally ‘there’; I mean ‘there’ as in my phonebook and replying, quite happily it seemed, to my invitation for lunch at 1 in the Quad. Three years down the line and my bestest buds are a few from halls and those I happened to talk to in my first classes, (plus a few others along the way). But doing Fresher’s Week as a proper Fresher is totally unique. Even we oft-reserved British folk get off our seats (and faces) and chat, somewhat desperately to everyone, anyone. In fact you get so carried away introducing yourself to people you have to remind yourself not to strike up conversation with the gentleman sat next to you on the tube. But it seems that doing a Masters is a whole different ball game. I still report my first encounter with an LSE Masters student with horrified glee: Door opens part-way. ‘Hi. My name is Marcus. I live in the room next door. I just graduated from Durham. I’m not looking for friends.’ Door shuts. And based on tales from friends doing Masters here this year, not a lot has changed. Except for the Americans. What a super-friendly bunch…as long as you too are a rootin’-tootin’, beer-ponging Yank.
Avoid the peak of friendship making. When it seems too much of a hassle and you would rather stick with the reassuringly familiar, persevere. Be warned fair reader, the tale of the 3-friended 30-something. Don’t become her.
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