Lesli Marchese, Campus Carrier Features Editor
I smiled as I hugged my friend Michelle, happy that I could help her through her recent breakup. My high school years were a mix of academics, band, and feeling like an on-call therapist for several people. I loved to help people and still do. I enjoy listening to peoples’ problems and working through solutions with them, or being a shoulder to cry on if that’s what they needed most.
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a freshman, and in general as a person who is working on and becoming a self-sufficient adult, is the mystery of friendship. In high school, and in my younger years, I was aware that a lot of my friendships were with people simply because we went to the same school, and had classes together over the years. I kept hearing over and over, “wait until college – that’s where you make your real, lifelong friends.” So I waited, with an excited (and slightly apprehensive) state of mind, for college to begin.
I moved in to Berry and started making friends immediately with my Bonner class. In my first month as a freshman, I probably had at least 50 new numbers in my phone and over 100 new friends on Facebook. I immediately clicked with both of my roommates and other people around Berry. Life in my social bubble was going splendidly, and I couldn’t help but think “finally, this is it!”
But then life happened, and I realized the majority of the “friends” I had made were just acquaintances, and the people I considered myself to be good friends with weren’t holding up their end of the friendship.
As I have come to learn, friendship should be mutually beneficial to all parties involved. It’s not always going to be you give a cookie, you get a cookie. But in the end, you shouldn’t be giving all of your cookies away, without anyone ever offering you some of theirs.
That’s a silly metaphor, but the point is, you should be both giving and receiving in your friendships. I had to spend a lot of time reevaluating my friendships, both those I had made at Berry and from high school. I broke off a friendship from high school that had reached a toxic point, and upon revisiting it, I realized that it had been that way for a long time, probably for most of the seven years we had been friends. I had been consistently used and manipulated, always the giver in the friendship.
And again, at Berry, I realized someone that I had considered one of my closest friends was using me as more of a complaining wall and less as a real person who also had feelings and suffered from bad days. A chasm started growing between us, and I always felt like I was walking on eggshells around them. I did not feel like I could talk to them about my problems, or spend time with them without listening to their problems for the duration that we spent together. I hung onto the friendship desperately, unwilling to let go of it because I had believed this would be one of the “lifelong” friendships that I had been seeking for so long.
After many miserable months, I realized that you can make new friends, and you should not be afraid of evaluating a friendship that isn’t working. I ended up talking with this friend and told them what was going on, and in the end I figured out that the friendship wasn’t ever going to work out.
Since then, I have made several friends here at Berry who have shown me the true meaning of friendship – a mutual relationship where you both lean on each other and contribute good feelings. You should always be looking for ways to help one another and build each other up. Even the best of friends can have occasional squabbles, but in a good friendship, you know that your friend will be there for you, and vice versa, no matter what.
So get out there and meet people around Berry! Don’t be afraid to try new things and meet people that are different from those that you knew in high school. You may not click with every single person, and not every friend you make your freshman year will still be your friend your senior year. Take the time to surround yourself with people who lift you up. Be the friend you want others to be to you, and you will find lifelong friends here.