My two roommates and I are close friends from high school that decided to go to Oxy together. Ever since we arrived here Aug. 20, we’ve been associating the new people here with people we knew from high school. Everyday it seems like someone new reminds us of someone old. When we share stories at dinner or anecdotes on the Quad, we often switch names of people that remind us of our high school social life.
During Orientation week, I met and became close with one of my peers. The two of us were together the entire time. We told each other about weird stories from our childhood, talked about where we were from and by the end of the day, I was happy to know that I had met an amazing person here on only the second day.
As the two of us were walking towards the MP together, I was hit with the sudden realization that my new friend reminds me exactly of one of my closest friends from high school. Despite the fact that their features are different looking into my new friend’s eyes made me feel like I was talking to the old one. It was not only their physical characteristics that made me connect them together, though, it was their personalities too. They both have the same type of expressive passion for the sciences. They both play sports. They are both very friendly. They both have the same type of smile on their face when talking to you and they both engage in such thoughtful conversations that I want to talk to them for hours and hours.
There are also some people that I have only walked by once or twice and immediately associated with someone from high school. I don’t even know most of these people’s names, but they resemble old acquaintances and friends, and every morning and afternoon as I’m walking towards my classes, I feel that I am strolling the hallways of my high school.
It feels nice to be acquainted with personalities that I had known in high school. Some people — acquaintances rather than friends — I knew I wouldn’t see after graduating. Despite the fact that I did not even spend much time with these people, it still saddened me knowing that we were parting ways. However, as I’ve come to find new people at Oxy with similar traits and personalities as those acquaintances, I’ve been feeling more comforted. I feel that I have not completely left those people that I knew behind.
I feel that creating these associations has had a couple of effects on my rather short time at Oxy. Despite the fact that I’ve been here for only two months so far, I feel I have been here much longer than that. My theory is that because I’ve been constantly seeing people that remind me of people from my high school, my Oxy experience just feels like an extension of my high school experience. I feel more connected to it and the people around me.
Just looking at the other first years around me, I kind of assume that they also feel this way. So far, I’ve seen friend groups that seem to be very close together. I would even assume they’ve known each other for a while, not two months. I feel that everyone has been connecting their new friends with old ones, which has enabled them to get along with others more easily. As human beings, we seem to naturally create connections between things and people, especially in a new environment.
Creating associations has helped me find comfort in a place that is otherwise hard to adjust to. The last few weeks before starting college, I was worried that I would constantly miss high school and my old friends that were moving away to new places. That has not been the case, though. While yes, I have had instances where I’ve missed certain moments, classes or people from high school, creating these connections between new and old acquaintances has helped me deal with that.
Associating new people with my old friends makes it feel as if I’ve never parted from my old ones, while making new friends at the same time. It has almost been like I’ve been hanging out with two people at once — a new and old friend.
Contact Francine Ghazarian at ghazarian@oxy.edu
