The Ghosts of Friendships Past

October 30th was the fourth anniversary of me joining my sorority. I was boo’d up with Tex and almost forgot about it, but remembered in time to shoot LS a text that evening. She responded, but that was it. To be perfectly honest, part of the reason that I avoid Greek events and joining a grad chapter isn’t just that I’m busy. I don’t like being reminded of my fractured relationship with LS. I love my sorority and despite the fiasco that was senior year of college, I wouldn’t trade my letters. My sole regret is that by pledging, I lost what I thought was a really good friend. Sure, LS and I are on speaking terms but unless I contact her first, it’s like she forgot I even existed. Tex has told me over & over that it’s her problem, but it’s hard to accept. Your linesister is supposed to have your back no matter what, even if you don’t like each other. I don’t expect us to ever be bosom buddies but it would be nice to at least be on the level of Merry Christmas/happy birthday texts, you know? Good or bad, we went through a lot together.

When I finish law school and the bar and have some free time (and extra money) I plan on joining a grad chapter. Since Tex and I are likely to relocate it’ll be a low pressure way of me making friends, since Lord knows I hate going to social functions that don’t have a purpose. I’m terrible at them. It’s hard enough maintaining the friendships that I do have. When you boil it down one weekend, 48 hours, is not a lot of time. And while I do come to the City 2-3 times a month I have to split time between Tex, Mom, Dad, siblings, extended family, friends, homework and free time. It’s a lot. Mind you, although my sibs, Tex and friends are in the City, both my parents live 30 minutes away on the opposite sides of town. My grandparents are an hour away coming from Orangeville or the City. And I have to drive 80 miles to get to the City to begin with so I do a LOT of running around! I scheduled a lunch date with a college buddy a whole month in advance for Thanksgiving break, that’s how packed my schedule is. So it’s frustrating to feel like I’m always responsible for planning hangout time on top of all that.

Hopefully, I will still have most of my non-law school friends when I finish. Bad enough that I can’t watch Law and Order without analyzing the legal merits of the case, don’t take away what little social life I have!

 

Make new friends, but keep the old…

By this time next year, all my friends will have graduated from college. Of course, entering the workforce means that many of them will be relocating. They’ll no longer be just a short trip across campus; instead, we’ll be making Skype dates and searching for airfare deals to come see each other. Specifically, I’m talking about my besties. With Maya’s relocation to NYC*, Sunny looking for another job and Porsche’s bicoastal lifestyle, my social life outside of Tex and family gatherings is dwindling steadily. Sure, I’ve made friends in law school but it’s not quite the same.

I’ve never been good at making friends, mostly because I don’t like going out. I’m not a big drinker, clubs are generally out the question because they’re usually not smoke-free, and parties are too dark and crowded. My idea of an exciting Friday night is hitting a concert, playing video games while drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade**, seeing a new art exhibition or having a casual dinner party. Suffice it to say I never quite fit in with the other girls. While I have one law school buddy, Tasha, who likes the same things I do, I don’t like being dependent on just one friend. That’s a quick way to wear out your welcome, but my efforts to strike up a deeper friendship with some of the other girls has been unfruitful thus far.

It’s harder down here in Orangeville. Despite having 3 or 4 colleges in the vicinity, it’s not a young person’s town and there is a dearth of black students at the law school. I hate to say it but most of the other black girls in my class are rude or overly dramatic. I lack the patience to put up with ugly attitudes or nonstop “crises”. The rich white people have formed a clique unto themselves. As for the others, it seems that all everyone else wants to do is get drunk, eat Mexican food, or visit their long distance boos. *deep sigh*

Still, there are a few girls who I’ve really enjoyed talking to in group settings. And I’m hoping that since I’ll be more involved next year (I’m on two exec boards), my social circle will expand a little bit. I’m toying with the idea of joining my sorority’s grad chapter anyway…I miss wearing my line jacket and roasting the other orgs. Z-Phi!

*I know you say you’re coming back down south but Sunny & I don’t believe you. You need more people!

**The reason why I don’t drink? NO ALCOHOL TOLERANCE WHATSOEVER. All it takes is a couple glasses of Arbor Mist or its equivalent and I’m gooood. 

 

Work hard, play hard

Last week was horrendously long. I have a memo due tomorrow that we’ve been working on for a month and the professor just told us on Thursday that we needed to add a question presented, brief answer, fact statement and conclusion–all this time we had been operating under the assumption that it was an informal memo with the discussion section only. BOOOO! HISSSS! Anyway, I just couldn’t deal. Since I’ve made a resolution to try and connect with more of my peers,  Thursday night I hit up the local Mexican restaurant with my section mates to celebrate a buddy’s birthday. Friday night I hung out with my BLSA friends, got tipsy, and played video games (The Michael Jackson Experience for Wii and Rap Star for PlayStation are instant party makers, FYI). Saturday night was law school prom–think high school prom, if alcohol was freely available and you can imagine some of what went down. I stuck to shaking my groove thing but I still woke up bleary eyed. I won’t incriminate my classmates by divulging the foolishness that went on this weekend,, but suffice it to say that it was crazy fun. I won’t be doing that again for a while though!

I managed to drag myself to the library in the afternoon and spent 3.5 hours finishing my memo and doing homework for Monday. I was struggling not to nap the whole time. Even though I woke up at 11,  my sleep schedule’s all off because I went to bed at like 3am Friday & Saturday and I have a (probably boring) ethics lecture at 8:30am sharp tomorrow. I will be in bed promptly at 10pm like a little old lady. Only one more week until spring break…and then the pre-exam, end of semester madness starts. I can’t believe that the end of 1L is only 2 months away! Just gotta make it…

 

Holiday hassle

I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. Christmas is unquestionably my favorite holiday but having divorced parents, it also comes with what my sibs and I like to call the Holiday Shuffle. My sister and I shudder to think how much more complicated it will become when we get married and have in-laws to visit, too–it’ll go from a two step to a doggone electric slide!

It makes me wonder why we overcomplicate things so. The older I get, the less things I want outside of health, happiness, love and a good job. I wonder why it’s considered horrid to limit children to five gifts, or three, or even just one. I know I would have howled as a child but just as quickly gotten over it. After all, how many toys ended up gathering dust after I took them out of the box? I remember how I begged and begged for a Doodle Bear one year and barely even played with it. Shameful. Shopping for presents is so stressful, too, and while my mother will smile at whatever perfume set or bracelet we give her, will she even really need it? I know what she’ll really be happy about is seeing her children all at the same time, something which only happens on the holidays now since we’re all grown up.

I don’t mean to sound gloomy. I’m so glad to be home, sleeping 10 hours a night and not having to cook! Washing dishes used to seem such a chore, but now that I know what it is to have to cook and clean up afterward I’ll gladly be up to my elbows in suds to enjoy a meal I didn’t labor over myself. Yes, please! And in even better news, Tex will be back to see me in just 4 more days. I haven’t seen him since the week before Thanksgiving.

I had plans to see Maya and Sunny before they left for the holidays, but those were derailed by a nasty cold. I managed not to get sick during finals but not even 48hrs later I felt like someone had shoved cotton balls up my sinuses. Today is the first day I’ve felt totally back to normal. But they’ll be back in time for my birthday before I head back to law school, and Porsche and Aristocat will be around so I’m sure I’ll see them soon. At any rate, Christmas day will be just the beginning of the fun!

 

Get your mind right

Now that I’m law student I get a whole week off for Thanksgiving break instead of just 2 days (winning!). Of course, with exams only two weeks away the one-upmanship is in full force. About half of the student body claims to be staying in Orangeville studying until Thanksgiving Day. Um, okay. School is definitely a priority, but I’ve got a Bachelor’s so it’s not like I’m unemployable if the worst case scenario happens and I fail out. Which I won’t. Maybe those folks can study 24/7 but I need breaks. I’ve found that if I take a full weekend, I don’t procrastinate when it’s time to do work on Monday and I’m much more efficient.

I definitely see what people mean by mental warfare though. People will try to scare you and with outline and exam banks going back 10-15 years, there’s no reason to fail a law school exam unless you consistently skipped class, paid zero attention and did the readings only occasionally. What screws people up is working themselves up into a frenzied panic and getting so psyched out that once they get in the exam room, they can’t see straight. That’s why I’m strategically avoiding the law school library and going down the street to the public library where I don’t have to worry about gunners waylaying me and bragging about their 100 page outline. By the way, 100 pages is not an outline, it’s a transcript of the course. Better yet, it’s a novella. How are you going to memorize 100 pages of info, verbatim, for FOUR exams? Good luck with that.

Anyway, this weekend was pretty great. I got to see Maya and Sunny, the former hooked my hair up (thanks girl!) and even my line brothers (who, it turns out, can cook their butts off). It was really fun. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my big sis before I go back to Orangeville and the new Harry Potter movie is out, which looks to be even more epic on screen that it was in the book. And of course, I’m indulging in a bit of retail therapy on black Friday. If I have to be stuck in the books for the next three weeks, at least I can go to the library looking fly!

 

Cuffing Season

It’s that time of year again–there’s a pronounced chill in the air and what better way to heat things up than by getting cozy with another warm body?

Hookups are running rampant at the law school. Y’all know the drill! People get stressed out so they drink to unwind, but drinking makes them horny, and the nearest source of relief is not their long distance boo so things happen. Last week while burning the midnight oil I was interrupted by the, er, enthusiasm of a classmate who lives above me…my cue to go to sleep, clearly. After weeks of observing my peers’ interactions I finally put two and two together and almost tossed my cookies in the hallway from delayed trauma. EWWWWW! That is all.

I won’t go into any more detail because I am not Gossip Girl;  suffice it to say that after hearing about some of the debauchery that took place at the Halloween party while I was out of town last weekend I’m glad I missed it. I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face around some people just from hearing the stories…

 

Newness

I’m settling in at school, but still having some trouble getting adjusted to Orangeville. I really, really miss the city. Around here, I can walk downtown without passing anybody on the street. Everything closes early and it’s just so quiet. I never considered myself a city girl–I grew up with a creek in my backyard, for goodness’ sake! I guess it’s one of those things that you can’t really know until after the fact. My life down here is pretty good–my fellow students are friendly, I don’t seem to be the class dummy, I have a great little apartment and my landlord is a peach. But I miss my college friends, my boyfriend, and my family. I know that in retrospect, the three years I spend here will seem to have flown by; but time passes a little more slowly when you’re living it. But I should have a car by this time next year, which will make the hour and a half distance irrelevant.

In the meantime, my fall  shows will all be back in the next couple of weeks to provide me with a little escapism, lol. But for real, my friends and family have been very supportive. I put a bunch of birthday, Christmas and graduation cards on display in my bedroom as a daily reminder that no matter how my day goes, there are plenty of people who care about me and want to see me succeed–they always makes me smile, even if I’m feeling a little blue.

 

The Setup

I’m almost at the end of my first week in law school and it hasn’t been bad at all. This entire week has consisted of an introductory course designed to show us the rudiments of briefing, legal analysis, oral arguments, note taking and outlining. Of course, things will get real next week. I have reading assignments for every class the first day except one, and I’m just hoping Prof. Crimlaw won’t wait until Sunday night when I’ve settled down with my pre-bedtime mug of Ovaltine* to post the reading.

So far, none of the individual assignments have totaled more than 20 pages for the first week, so I feel like I’m being set up to get comfortable only to get slammed with 100 pages per class each night in the second week; OR the reading will be so incredibly dense and incomprehensible that it takes me 30 minutes to get through one paragraph. Either way it really doesn’t matter because I have to get through it anyway. Failure is not an option!

My social life has been good too though. There’s a different mindset in grad school than in undergrad, and it’s nice not to have people ask me “So what did you do this weekend?” and expect to hear me say “I went to this awesome club and I got sooo wasted” etc etc. Most of the people here are 25+ like my siblings, and I always got along better with their friends than with most people my own age. And I didn’t think I would see Tex until Labor Day weekend, but I got an unexpected opportunity to come home next weekend. I’ll be super motivated to get all my studying done on time for the next two weeks so that I can enjoy catching up with my beau

More to come later!

*I know that’s so 1950s. But it’s soothing!

 

My side of the fence

As we left a friend’s graduation reception, Sunny and Maya asked me to come out to the club with them. “It’s your last night as a college student! You don’t want a last hurrah?” Maya asked. I shook my head. “Are you sure?” Sunny inquired. “Yes, I’m sure. If I ever think I’m missing something, I’ll let you know.”

The inspiration for this post was inspired by talk of Sunny and her new crush on the ride over to the reception. I have fond memories of going to random campus events looking cute, hoping to catch that special someone’s eye. There’s a certain thrill in getting dressed up for a first date. And it’s flattering to hit the mall in summer wear that’s just this side of scandalous, complaining about all the dudes trying to holler but not-so-secretly loving the attention. Summer is almost upon us, and with it a new wave of warm weather flings. The lure of the unexpected has a certain appeal, and I can see why some people love the single life.

But the question is…am I missing something after all? I won’t say I’ve never wondered if I’ll regret settling down early. No diss to Tex, of course–I love him and I’m happy. It’s been two and a half years and we’re still not sick of each other, which sometimes seems nothing short of miraculous. The thing is, despite what Sex and the City would have you believe, being single isn’t all hot parties and hot people. And bad dates aren’t always hilarious–sometimes, they’re just plain awkward (like the time I nearly got my face slobbed off while trying to unbuckle my seatbelt. Blech. At least dinner was tasty.)

That being said, no relationship is Valentine’s Day 365 either. As much as I talk about how great it is to be with one person who really cares about you, I don’t want to be one of those smug women who rubs her coupledom in everybody’s face. I’m not special because I have a good boyfriend, I’m lucky. And grateful too, because I know what it’s like to be single & think that your time will never come, and to be deliriously happy with someone one day only to be heartbroken the next. So instead of passing judgment on others, I try my best to simply enjoy what I’ve got. It’s human nature to question one’s circumstances…but as Porsche so memorably said, “If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, you can bet there’s a higher water bill!”

 

One Size Fits All doesn’t apply to friendships

For about a year now I’ve felt like I’m outgrowing several of my associates in some aspects. They’re all funny, smart, entertaining girls but sometimes the drama factor gets to be too much. It seems as if they’re still trying to find themselves and going through the associated growing pains, while I’m not. They like to party, and I don’t.

But even besides that, they’re fun to hang with and I feel like I kind of get left out of things…Yes, it’s true that I like to spend time with Tex, and I don’t drink or like sushi. I refuse to go to clubs and will turn down impromptu shopping trips (I don’t work as much as they do so I’m on a tighter budget). Still, I’m down to socialize at happy hour, most sushi restaurants serve cooked food,  and I won’t turn down an invite to chill with Tex (unless it’s last minute and we’re already hanging out). It makes me wonder if we’re really cool like that, or just casual acquaintances?

However, I’ve come to realize that my problem is that I want them all to be “all purpose friends”–someone who I can confide in and borrow $20 from when I need it most, but who is also fun to kick it with. Somebody who’s down for a girl’s day out at the mall, but can switch gears from boy problems to career goals without skipping a beat. The fact is that those friends are RARE. A lucky few of us possess one or even several. But usually, the people you go clubbing with are not necessarily the people you’d call if your car broke down on the highway and vice-versa. The reality is that we have different friends for different purposes in our lives.

Upon reflection though, the situation isn’t as dire as it may seem. Tex and I are best friends, in addition to being SOs. My sister and I have always been close; we talk on the phone every day and have regular appointments for “sister time”. And Porsche can be counted on to call or text me whenever I go MIA for too long. So although my social calendar may not always be full, it’s fulfilling for the most part. I won’t judge anyone else until we see who’s left standing a year from now…