These Things That I'm Learning As I Grow Up

A Lunch Date With Evelyn

High School was easy in almost every sense. Well, for me at least. I was a boarder for my entire high school career and this allowed me to form special and strong friendships very quickly. I was always surrounded by the girls that I loved. I woke up next to them, I sat next to them in class, I did my extra mural activities with them, I studied with them in the afternoons and come night time, I'd fall asleep in the same dorm room with them. On the weekends I'd go home to be with my family, but I was reunited with my friends early on Monday morning. This caused our friendships to require very little effort.

Having just a couple of weeks left of my first year in University, I've been thinking about how different University is to High School and how much my life has changed in the last 10 months. One thing that I have noticed is that friendships in University are much more difficult to maintain when compared to High School friendships - as I'm sure all friendships outside of school are.

Here at Rhodes I have met so many different people from all walks of life. I have made friends with some great people, but it has truly taken a lot of effort to maintain those friendships. We are all busy, we all live in different res' or off campus, we take different courses and very few of us live in the same province, and so it requires effort and planning in order to spend time with one another.

A couple of weeks ago I performed my Drama Prac Exam piece. I was placed in a group with people that I hardly knew - I had only met one of the group members before. I was pleasantly surprised when the four of us got on so well and it wasn't long before new friendships had been formed. Determined not to let this friendship fade after the exam was over, we set a date to have lunch together. And so there we sat in a little Grahamstown coffee shop for over 3 hours enjoying these new friendships that were forming, that would hopefully last and that would require effort to maintain - effort that would one day be so worth it.