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Passage A
Freshman Friendship
Almost two years ago, I stood on a balcony, joined hands with my three most intimate friends and listened to one of them tell a story about four girls with different backgrounds and talents who left home and went to college at a mythical place called Happy Valley.
After we left our friend's apartment that last night of our freshman year, we ended up on the lawn, playing frisbee at 3 a.m. and sitting on the dormitory steps talking for hours.
Alisa, Karen, Gabrielle and I had spent that day together just being freshmen ---- going to the sandwich shop for the last lunch of the semester, trying on each other's clothes, watching movies and acting like we would never see each other again.
Three Months is a Long Time
For freshmen, and especially for us, saying goodbye at the end of the first year can feel like saying goodbye forever.
Three months can seem like a long time when you are leaving friends and acquaintances whom you have only known for a year. Your freshman year moments are irreplaceable.
My advice to any freshmen reading this is to cherish those moments. You may grow completely apart from the people you spent your first year with, or you may find yourself fortunately comparing them to siblings at the end of your junior year as I did.
Even if you have almost forgotten your freshman year roommates two years later, and barely recognize them when you encounter them in front of the gymnasium, you can never replace that year and the brand-new feeling that your first year of college brings.
Roommates and Majors in American Colleges
Freshman roommates are usually assigned randomly, with no attention to their majors, and may have little in common with one another either academically or personally. They may take none of the same classes, and do not have to choose their majors the first year. In future years it's very easy to change roommates, and in the junior or senior year it's quite common for students to move to off-campus apartments. So there's much less likelihood that freshman roommates will become lifelong friends.
A lot will change after your freshman year. You will meet new people and do new things. You will do a lot more growing up.
At the beginning of our senior year, Karen took her hometown boyfriend Kevin on a tour of campus and downtown. "That's where we grew up," she told him, motioning toward Atherton Hall, where the four of us spent our first two years at Penn State.
We learned more outside the classroom than we learned inside it. That dorm is where we learned and discussed the lessons of our freshman and sophomore years. I think the principal lesson I learned was the definition of true friendship. And I have never had nor will ever have better teachers than Alisa, Karen and Gabrielle.
American and Chinese Friendships
Americans are very adapt at making new friends, while Chinese people are very skillful at keeping their old friends. The main reason for this is that Americans experience more changes in their personal circumstances, such as changing jobs, moving to another town, or getting divorced. At any given time an American may have only a few close friends but many casual acquaintances. Over the course of a lifetime an American will probably have more friends than a Chinese person has but a Chinese person may have more lifelong friends.
That lesson can best be summarized by something Alisa and Karen told me when I was upset at the end of last semester and needed a shoulder to cry on. They said no matter how far we drift apart or who else we become friends with after college, we will always incline to recall each other first whenever we think of college.
I couldn't agree more.
The story Alisa told on that balcony is far from over. I sometimes wonder if the following is how it will end:
"…and those four little girls grew up and realized their dreams. They found themselves all over the country, from farms, to cities, to the suburbs, doing everything they wanted to do - a computer technician, a physician, an attorney, and an architect ---with the companions they wanted in husbands, children and pets.
And occasionally they would make it back to reunions at that mythical valley and see their old friends, laughing about the good times. They had succeeded in forgetting any of the bad times.
And they lived happily ever after."
Class Reunions
In many Western countries it is customary for the people who graduated from a college or school in the same year to gather periodically at the campus or in their hometown for a class reunion. It often includes parties, dinners, dancing, golfing, bowling, and other special events such as visits with former teachers. Reunions usually occur every five years, beginning five years after graduation. Certain reunions such as the 10th, 25th, and 50th are often considered special, and are more elaborate than the others.
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