Leaving My Little Village

Recently, I have been reflecting most on the nature of my friendships at college vs. at home. One of the biggest shifts that I will have to adjust to is the disparity in distance. At home, my closest friend lives a twenty minute drive away from me, here my closest friend is my roommate. The closeness in physical distance has completely changed the way I perform and receive friendship. To start, I have had to put so much less effort into making sure I spend time with everyone who I want to build a relationship with. On Wake Forest's small campus of approximately a square mile (excluding the separated properties), I run into everyone I want to build a relationship with and can maintain it with passing friendliness. At home, my overall lack of responding tends to lead me to pigeon hole myself into a couple friends I am comfortable with, while neglecting people that I also care about.

Another benefit of the closeness in college is the spontaneity with which I can see my people. While at home I have to plan at least a week ahead in order to get a couple of my friends' schedules to line up in a manner conducive to hanging out, at Wake the planning looks something more like:

"what are you doing right now?"

"nothing"

"cool let's go get food."

This accesible company has been so nice and has kept me out of bed on many days where I would simply not respond to requests to hang out but am required to answer a knock at my door. College has spoiled me. Leaving my at home friends for college was hard of course, but leaving people that I am with every second of the day is going to give me withdraw. I am used to not seeing my home people for weeks at a time, here I go 48 hours at most. I genuinely have become codependent on people (panic from a former introvert). I think going home is going to be hard, but I hope that it will reaccustom me to enjoy hanging out with myself again. Also, maybe the habits I have picked up here will help me reach out more and put more energy into my friendships than I have in the past. All I know is that it is going to be a huge shift. And I will probably cry. Oh well.

Bye ttyl,

Jordan

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