Beyond the Bubble: Friendship as an Investment
After hearing my description of my off-term, most of my friends respond, "So basically, you're on another FSP."
Basically.Of course, I'm not living with a host family, I don't have to think about proper conjugation before speaking to a waiter and a family member is never more than a twenty-minute subway ride away. But just like my life in Paris last winter, I have spent most of my days this term wandering cluelessly around the city with a group of around five other Dartmouth students.
Why exactly does this happen — why do Dartmouth students cling to each other in unfamiliar situations? In Paris, it was the natural result of spending every day in class together and sharing a native tongue (even though, you know, we definitely kept that language pledge). One of my biggest regrets from last winter was that I never became good friends with any Parisians, and I am still quite jealous of those who emerge from study abroad programs with a long list of foreign email addresses. Not only did their language skills no doubt improve more than mine, but they also were exposed to a piece of foreign culture I had missed.
In New York, this exclusive grouping of Dartmouth students is still understandable, but less excusable.On my FSP, we were restricted by the simple lack of opportunities to meet French natives. Though our professors arranged gatherings with their French students, it is quite difficult to penetrate social circles when you're leaving the country in a few weeks. This term, however, I could have easily started friendships within the social circle of my best friend who attends NYU, especially since I live nearby on Long Island.
Yet I've made no new non-Dartmouth friends, in a city where I'm bound to find hundreds, if not thousands, of people with similar interests and compatible personalities. And somehow, I had no qualms about befriending three people I had never met simply because their affiliation with Dartmouth assured me that we would get along. That was a ridiculous assumption, of course, since really, what are we guaranteed to have in common other than a relatively high intelligence level and a fear of Hanover winter?
One explanation is that relationships require a time commitment, and since Dartmouth places such a high value on social connections, it's easy to see friendship as an investment.A friend on an FSP this term recounted advice she received from a native of her city. Though she thought it would be more profitable tobuild relationships with the people she would see for the next year and a half (the Dartmouth students) rather than with foreigners,he disagreed. Friendship shouldn't be viewed in economic terms, he said.
Dartmouth students also do share a special bond.It is natural to gravitate toward those who have gone through the very unique experience of attending Dartmouth, who are familiar with the emotion that the word Trips evokes, who can rattle off the pros and cons of Collis, who will have some reaction to the name Andrew Lohse ’12, who understand the allure of the River on a spring day.
But watching alums recreate Dartmouth's social scene in apartments in New York has made me apprehensive. It's comforting to a degree, knowing that I will always have a strong social network to fall back on, but it's also a bit troubling. Though Dartmouth students are incredibly diverse and no four years in Hanover look the same, we've all shared a similarly narrow college experience. I am thankful for the connections I have made through Dartmouth over the past two years and over this term, but I do not want to miss out on discovering the many, many other people in the world, simply because their degrees are not the same as mine or because the investment does not make sense.
So I ask you, and myself, to at least make the effort during your off-term or FSP to meet someone new, even if you will never see them again after the term. Get into a conversation with a stranger, someone with whom you won't be able to debate the value of the Dimensions protest, but who can expose you to perspectives that extend beyond our little bubble. You may face rejection, you may struggle to maintain these relationships beyond the term, you may forsake another person to wave hello to back on campus. But I bet you it's worth it. Most of us pride ourselves on our curiosity about the world, and there is no better time to start learning than in a new city.