In small, restricted communities, like schools or Oxbridge colleges, it’s difficult to avoid the creation of multiple cliques – people banding together based on similar personalities or shared interests. In these settings, the people who you choose to spend time with, and the people who subsequently accept you into their groups, say something about who you are.
And by default, those external to these groups may feel that they know something about you straight away – just by the group you spend your lunch breaks with, when they don’t even know your full name.
A discussion with three friends about our friendship groups in college made me think more deeply about the people I surround myself with and why.
During this discussion, I was told that my friends are ‘rogue’, a description which is completely true. I’m not really ‘in’ a group; I’m happy to speak to anyone, as long as you’re nice enough. It keeps things interesting. But the conversation did make me wonder how I choose my friends, and what they say about me. How they shape my identity and perhaps how I shape theirs in return.
I have always known that I would find ‘my people’ at university. It’s one of those big promises that you’re made as a kid; adults love telling you that you’ll find people just like you at university, as that’s where they made their forever friends. I have, luckily, found people at Oxford that I see in this light. The people I’ve dreamt of meeting since I was little. But what is most interesting is that all of the friends I have here, and have made up until university, all bring out completely different parts of who I am.
I first met my coursemates, Nancy and Finn, online in the summer before Oxford. We’d be studying the same niche course at the same small college, so I instantly knew we’d have to become close, whether we liked it or not. I feel very fortunate to write that they are now two of my dearest friends.
This is because we laugh at each other’s jokes and console each other when we’re upset, as good friends do; but also because we like to talk about the same things – history, languages, and every existential question that you could think of. That’s my favourite part about being friends with them. It’s the feeling of walking away from a conversation with my brain aching, my beliefs shifting, and a new pair of eyes with which to see the world.
At Oxford, I am also lucky enough to live with one of my ‘college wives’ and closest friends, Christie. I often joke that fate brought Christie and I together. She was one of the first people I met after having moved to Oxford, and I still remember her big smile and lively energy when she introduced herself to me. We lived together in first year, and we still live together now; because of this, a hug, chat, rant, fashion advice and steamer (Christie always comes prepared!) have only ever been a door away throughout my time at university.
I have little in common with Christie. She likes dancing, photography, and wants to be a consultant. I, on the other hand, can’t dance, take photos on my terrible iPhone X camera, and had to google what a consultant actually did when I first met her. Christie can’t relate to my love of languages, girly pop music, children’s fiction, or history museums – but she still holds a wonderful curiosity about my life, that I very eagerly return. That curiosity is like an emotional bridge: we have become so close that now we just get each other. She is calm and I am emotional. She is logical whilst I’m creative. We balance out perfectly.
I used to worry about having such a range of friendships. Do I subconsciously change my personality around different people? Who truly am I? And how do people perceive me?
But the more thought I’ve given it, the more I’ve realised that diversity in friendships is a blessing. I am not several personalities in one body, split between different friends. Instead, I am one whole person, made up by the people who surround me. How lucky I am to know such talented, loving people with niche interests and senses of humour – people who bring out different, but equally incredible, parts of myself.
In fact, as we make new friends and lose old ones, is it not inevitable that we’ll meet people who have different perceptions of us?
I met my best friend, Grace, at sixth-form college. She approached me at the beginning of year twelve and said that, given we were studying the same A-Level subjects, we should be friends. I handed over my Snapchat, thinking that she would become just another person to text for notes if I missed a class. I had no idea of how close we would become.
Now, almost five years on, we have both moved to university. I’m down south, and she’s far away in the north. It feels like half of who I am is up there with her, packed in her suitcase when she was getting ready to leave. It makes those holiday meetings all the more special.
I have never known anyone more similar to myself than Grace. She feels so deeply, and will always have a thought-provoking, profound thing to say whenever I’m feeling lost. I’ve never met anyone with such a gift. And I’m always there to give a very angry, heartfelt rant about anyone who I don’t feel has treated her kindly.
It’s odd that now that we’re at university, we’re both having experiences and have met people that the other will never fully know or understand, try as we might. For Christie, Nancy, and Finn, these are the same people and experiences that also intimately form their lives. They also understand the feeling of saying something embarrassing in a tutorial, and can advise on what to wear to that formal event with an odd dress code.
Yet, my Oxford friends weren’t able to comfort me during my A-Levels, university applications, all the dramas of my sixth- form college, and when I felt culture shock whilst abroad during my gap year. This was the time when I grew up the most – the time that shaped who I am and where I am today.
If you’d asked me a couple of years ago about my opinion on making friends and having to move away from old ones, I would have likely burst into tears. What can I say, I’ve always been nostalgic.
But I’ve since come to realise the beauty in nostalgia, even with the sadness. All of my friends – no matter what corner of the world they’re now in – found me during a specific moment of my life, influenced how I’d grow, and have been with me ever since, even if that can only be on the other side of the phone.
We carry memories of each other in our minds and hearts – precious things to be cherished, and remembered fondly.
These memories, in all their glory, make up how I dress, how I speak, how I think, and how I feel.
Eventually my Oxford friends, like my friends from home, will carry such memories too. We will move onto the next part of our lives as fundamentally different people, all thanks to each other. And what a remarkable thing that is.