Leif and I spent these past two weekends reunioning. Reunions are a strange sort of phenomenon. Outwardly, they are meant to bring together old friends; but, not so secretly, they are also designed to elicit contributions from alums. The folks who show up are almost always a subset of the full (original) class: alum who live nearby, who have more social tendencies in the first place, and who have families or significant others. I found this to be true of Leif’s Science & Math reunion and of my Stanford reunion. In some ways, this is disappointing because the reunion becomes more of a showing-off of new careers and new partners (which feels false) than a reuniting of former friendships. If your friends are the ones who didn’t show up, you end up having meaningless conversations with people who you don’t actually care about. You quickly discover that you’ve lost the connection with old friends; but if you’re lucky, you may discover somewhat of a connection with people who you were not previously friends with.
A highlight of my reunion was visiting with friends, Erika Williams and Molly Meneely, for breakfast at Hobees:
But overall, I came away from my reunion feeling a little empty. Most of my good friends these days are not my former classmates. Of my good friends who were there, we couldn’t spend much quality time together because of the way the reunion was designed (happy hour, to tail gate, to class party…all settings where people just kept boozing). I almost had more fun at Leif’s NC School of Science & Math reunion! Although I didn’t know anyone there, I had long conversations with about 10 really interesting people! Maybe being removed from the history and relationships in that group let me look beyond any cliques to enjoy the people as they are today.
It will be interesting to see how these people and my relationships with them will change in another 5 years, although I imagine that I’ll grow even more distant from my college friends as our lives continue to spiral away from each other (geographically, professionally, emotionally). Although that seems inevitable, maybe it’s not entirely undesirable. Afterall, I have a fantastic life: I am challenged and satisfied by school; my friends are fun and interesting; I am healthy and active; and I am loved and supported by my family. College was a great part of my life–but it is natural and fulfilling to have moved on.
One Comment
“as our lives continue to spiral away from each other”… or not.
I think sometimes, we go further for going, even after having changed so much.