Friends for life or friends for now?

We arrive on campus as blank slates with the opportunity to reinvent ourselves anew. Except for the handful of extraordinary students President Brodhead mentions in his legendary convocation speeches, no one knows what we went through to get here. Our lives before Duke are erased except for the details we choose to share, and we recreate ourselves through academic and social exploration. Along the way, however, a certain depth in our relationships gets lost, and perhaps a part of ourselves, too.

Compared to my high school friends, the personal lives of my Duke friends are total mysteries. I don’t know whether most of my friends at Duke have siblings. In fact, I know very little about my friends’ lives before they came to Duke. Like my friends, I don’t usually mention aspects of my personal history in casual conversation—how my dad had two hip replacements or that I haven’t seen my brother in almost a year—even though these things are not necessarily too intimate to share. While studying abroad, however, I always talked about my family, in part because they were the only people I consistently contacted from back home, but also because my Turkish and Jordanian friends asked me about them. Talking about family helped me feel settled in strange places and comfortable around strangers who shared a short history with me.

The friendships I made while abroad reminded me of my high school relationships, back when friendship was a family affair. During high school, my friends and I used to carpool to and from school with our parents, support each other at sporting events with our siblings and eat dinner together with our entire families. Similarly, my Turkish and Jordanian friends introduced me to their relatives and invited me into their families’ homes. When my parents visited me in Istanbul, I invited my new friends to meet them. In both cases, sharing our personal lives strengthened our friendships and drew us closer. Now, when I catch up with my high school friends and friends from abroad, they ask me about my brother and parents, because they view me both in the context of my family and as an individual.

The majority of conversations I have with my classmates focus on our shared experience as Duke students. Asking questions about family is an uncommon practice. At first, we may refrain from asking personal questions as a matter of respect, since we wish to respect the privacy of our classmates. Acquaintances are more eager to talk about romantic escapades than about their relationships with their siblings or their parents’ divorce, because explaining our lives before Duke can be difficult and painful. We default to speaking a common language, discussing safe topics like classes, summer plans and “What do you study?”

At Duke, our conversations take place in impersonal spaces, such as libraries, classrooms and dining halls, devoid of personal belongings that trigger memories of home or hint at the existence of any reality other than the present one we share at school. Yet if my friends were to visit my home in Florida, or even see my apartment, they might see the guitar and art supplies that sit in my closet, reminders of a time when I used to draw and paint every day. Reminders of a life I often keep behind closed doors.

When most students live on campus for three years or more, it’s difficult to separate our school and home lives. But we must not forget that we all have lives outside of Duke, and that we are more than the sum of our personalities and achievements. Although it is easier to share the details of private lives in safe spaces like our homes, living out of a suitcase for seven months last year taught me that all it takes to open up is the willingness to be vulnerable. At Duke, this means finding communities that encourage members to share and celebrate their unique pasts, yet still respect the decision to keep things private

So if you’re looking for a deep relationship and not just someone to share their notes, be intentional in learning something about your friend’s life beyond what’s on her resume. Cook dinner together, and talk about life outside of Duke. Ask about his family, and learn his siblings’ names. Soon enough, you may find that you feel like you belong more, too.

Rachel Anderson is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.