College Tests

Just twenty minutes ago, I hung up the phone with my childhood friend Sarah. Sarah was born the day after me and we have been best friends ever since. We have consoled, supported and enjoyed one another for the past twenty one years. So today, when Sarah called me it was no different. However, today’s call brought me immediately to Alice’s experiences in “Through the Looking Glass.”

Sarah telephoned me today for a “quick” vent session – really a 45 minute phone call – because she felt like all of her college friends had left her, she felt alone, confused and betrayed by her friends of two years. Sarah, like Alice, entered into an unknown. Sarah’s friend network from home was geographically absent and she was wandering around in her own dream-like Wonderland where she was unsure of whom or what to trust.

At college, most students are forced to break out of their own comfortable zone. Often we befriend people easily in the beginning, when friendships are low-commitment and based on an immediate mutual need for companionship. Over the years, we discover whom we can trust and with whom we are legitimately compatible and share interests. Fair-weathered friends drop away from our lives and true, strong friendships blossom. We learn through experience that as Emerson wrote “the only way to have a friend is to be one.”[1] Unfortunately, losing these initial friends is still painful and often hard to grasp, not matter who is at fault. Alice experienced this same phenomena in “Through the Looking Glass” when she lost her friend, the doe, in the wood where things have no names. As soon as the doe understood who he was, such as a young adult growing up in college, he quickly scampered off. Carroll describes this: “Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow-traveler so suddenly.” [2] However, Alice regained her sense of self after she left the woods and exclaimed “that’s some comfort.”[3] Losing friends is painful as a student, but it is a part of the college experience and of becoming an adult. Just as Alice did, you mature and cherish what you do have.

[4] A girl consoling her friend.

Not only does the college experience simply test a student in terms of friendship, but in more general terms as well. The four (potentially more) years that are spent at college are unlike any experience that a student has gone through before. You are encouraged to try new things, and to often try things in ways you never thought possible or that make you uncomfortable. For instance, the thought of sharing a bedroom, dealing with someone else’s alarm clock and routine used to make me cringe. At first the adjustment was hard, but I got over it. Instead my roommate became a friend, someone who kept me from being lonely. We were never best friends, but we helped one another out. For example, my freshman year roommate had to decorate her cooler for OU weekend, it was the night before and she had not even started. However, we joined forces and created a great cooler in just a few hours!

[5] The Last Minute OU Cooler.

Next year I will have my own room for the first time since high school, and I have to admit I have mixed feelings. I will enjoy my independence but miss the constant companionship. Alice was faced with this same experience upon entering the looking glass. Everything was backwards and zany. For instance Alice exclaims “Living backwards! I never heard of such a thing!”[6] But she eventually adjusts to her new surroundings, even joining in on the Queen’s backwardness asking “When do you expect to [prick yourself]?”[7] and laughing afterwards.

[8] Girl riding backwards on horseback.

The college experience forces every one of us out of our comfort zone. We often open ourselves up to others only to be hurt by an untrustworthy person we consider a friend. But we also meat tons of new and interesting people by opening ourselves up. It is only by sacrificing a little that we gain the world.

---

[1] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Friendship.”, 1841.

[2] Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner. New York, NY: Bramhall House (*no date given for publication). p227.

[3] Carroll, 227.

[4] http://images1.comstock.com/Imagewarehouse/TS/SITECS/NLWMCompingVersions/C0037/C0037101/C0037101.jpg

[5] Cooler photo from my files, October 2005.

[6] Carroll, 247.

[7] Carroll, 249.

[8] http://www.southalgonquincamp.com/photos/courtney%20backwards.jpg