Last night while flipping channels I caught just a few seconds of some random sitcom. In the clip, a husband was introducing another guy to his wife. “This is Mike, we used to go to college together. It’s okay if he crashes here with us a few days, right?” The wife agrees, since the two guys went to college together. I’m sure hilarity ensued shortly after I changed the channel.
Is that real life? Does that really happen? Since high school I’ve spent a little over five years attending college. For two years I attended Redlands Community College. I can name on one hand the people I’ve talked to since I walked out of there (and two of the five are faculty members!). I attended Weatherford’s Southwestern Oklahoma State University for a full year and I can only remember one person’s first and last name, and that’s only because he was the editor of the school newspaper. I attended OKCCC to finish my associate’s degree just a few years ago and I couldn’t name a single person who I went there with.
Most disappointing is my tenure at Southern Nazarene University. I attended classes there from March of 2004 through May of 2005. In the adult study program you sit in the same classroom with the same people throughout the entire program, which means I spent like sixty weeks in a row meeting and getting to know the same twenty-or-so classmates. Three of us put together a Christmas party in 2005 as a little mini-reunion. I thought people would get a kick getting together six months after graduation and finding out what everyone’s been up to; apparently not. Other than the three planners, only two other people showed up. And now I don’t even talk to the other people who helped me plan the party. For some reason I really thought I would stay in touch with my classmates, but that hasn’t been the case at all.
Maybe my college experience would have been different had I lived in the dorms or a frat house or something. Regardless, as it stands today I can’t imagine anyone I ever went to college with dropping by the house and wanting to “crash for a few days.” Hell, I can’t imagine anyone I ever went to college calling me and wanting to do lunch at this point.
After re-reading this entry I realized it sounds a little pouty. This isn’t a really poor-me post, honest. I just think it’s interesting how college pals are portrayed on television as life-long pals, when mine barely seemed to last mere minutes after shedding our caps and gowns.
Now that’s not entirely true. If you think about it, you’re still crashing with one of your college classmates. In fact, you married her!
But yes, and it’s the same in the work world. You work with people for years, think you will never part company, and within 6 months of moving to another job/company, you realize you will never see 98% of those people again. That’s life. The rarity is, 40 years after high school graduation, still being really good friends with an old buddy (male or female). What you realize is, the quantity of time you spend together now isn’t as important as the quality of your friendship. The people in your SNU class were acquaintances, not friends. Thrown together by circumstance. When the common goal was gone, so was the bond. Now, Susan, there’s a friend! Where else you gonna find somebody that can go one-on-one with you in a conversation and wash your dirty socks too? Hang on to her.
You don’t have to publish this. I was just writing you back. Mom
That’s true, I don’t hang with the Best Buy crew as much as I used to.
Hey, Rod. How about lunch sometime? :)
– Colton