| MIND FOOD |
| I wanted to create this page for the sole purpose that I really don't think that people my age these days really ever stop and think about their lives. It's really sad that, finally when someone hits down on a low day, he or she just doesn't bother to think about it and find out *why* it was a bad day. Friends, social lives, one's academic progress...they're all things that deserve so much more of our attention than many of us ever bother to give. Why? I think we all need to make more sense of our lives. |
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| Freshman year is one of the few times in your life where nearly everybody who's a freshman starts off on a fresh slate: you see someone eating alone and it's completely natural to join him or her. Better yet, you get assigned roommates and hallmates, the people you likely will spend a lot of your next year with. I'll admit, it was a great feeling, that freedom. Definitely not too many times like that. I wish it could happen more often. But that all changes the next year, at least at Duke, when you no longer live with only freshmen. All those people, hallmates, study partners, roommate, all of them "friends" if you will, are suddenly that much harder to see as regularly as you used to. But for the people who you think are really your friends, you *would* bother to see them as often as possible. You *would* still try to do stuff with them. If there's one thing I've noticed about friendship, it's that it MUST be reciprocal, and there are several ways that you can be assured that a friend is really a friend. Someone who actually cares about you, not just when you've broken your arm (got injured, serious problems, etc), but also, I would say even "especially" or "most importantly", for little things like making sure you're not alone doing nothing on a Friday night (unless that happens to be your actual wish) or bothering to make his/her way to your room and sit there and talk...to get to know you in the emptiest of settings. No doing two things at once, IMing and cell phone talking, gasp, even homework. Can you and your "friend" do absolutely nothing for an hour? Now there's a friend for you. Don't sit there thinking that this is easy until you've done it. |
| I want to preface this edition by stressing the importance I place in friendship. To put it lightly, it's something I've never had a whole lot of success with. All throughout high school, I had a group of "friends" who were like a clique: they clung to each other just fine, but whenever I was at any of their houses for a birthday party or just after watching a movie together, they would immediately ignore my presence and play some Playstation game among themselves. I continually felt betrayed...that they could be so inconsiderate. Well, perhaps it was my fault because I never actively made my presence felt. But to counter that, you aren't supposed to do that: friends should always acknowledge your presence, even when you don't want it to be known. For all these times in high school, I no longer talk to any of them, and as much as you'd think it'd be a blessing, I do feel a bit of recoil at doing so. These people most certainly didn't hate me, and they helped me with homework all the time at school. They just....didn't care when it was need the most. The closest I've felt toward real friends are the people that I still talk to, but very occasionally, now that I have graduated from high school. They planned surprise birthday parties for me, they supported me when I wanted to do Oscar contests and Secret Santa exchanges each year. These people *CARED* for me, and for that I will always be grateful. Unfortunately, we are very very different people in several ways, including our choices of career path, choice in music, interest in sports and other hobbies. I obviously won't let that get in the way of us being as tight as we managed to get by graduation, but there's a common belief of mine and many that you need more than just a few similarities in order to make real close friends. Maybe it's because I'm such a different person from most people that it's hard to find someone like me, or that I didn't see the importance of having *close* friends until it was too late (near the end of high school). For that, I am a self-professed near-loner. It's a feeling I've become all too used to...something I want to get rid of. But I'll tell you one thing, I've learned a lot about friendship since I've begun to analyze how I've utterly failed at forming them. What's that? Analyzing friendships is bad because they should develop naturally? That's a great point, but it's not fair for me, who really has no idea what a 'natural' friendship is. For the rest of this section, I'm going to talk about a couple instances of how my friendships have developed since I have come to Duke. |
| CAUTION: I am expressing my true thoughts here. I'm not holding back anything from you, the reader, except names and specific details you really shouldn't know anyway. More importantly, some people may feel a little taken back and angered at some of the comments I am going to make in the next two pages. I'm sorry for that, but at the same time, I cannot deny myself the right of saying what I truly believe. I hope you will take my thoughts for what they are, and understand that I am trying to make even a shred of sense about my own life. If you start to read what's below, I would strongly recommend you read to the end. Please enjoy what I have toiled for at least a couple hours to produce in words. |