When I was an undergrad, I used to have this recurrent dream.
I dreamt that I was graduating.
It was graduation weekend, and my family was there, and everyone was proud of me. I had good grades and a spot lined up in medical school. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t.
Every time I woke up from this dream, I was incredibly sad. Then I realized it was only a dream, and I felt much better.
Of course, my nightmare eventually became a reality: I graduated. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it was still kind of depressing. You know how they say college is the best four years of your life? Hopefully that’s not true, but it’s certainly better than medical school.
As it turns out, what I missed most about college (aside from the dozens of hours per week I spent procrastinating, watching Saved by the Bell reruns and playing video games) was living side by side with my closest friends (with whom I mostly procrastinated, watched Saved by the Bell reruns and played video games).
So you’ve got to believe I was thrilled by the chance to spend this weekend skiing with 16 of my closest friends from college.
And as it turns out, you can go home again.
Aside from the fact that a couple of my old college buddies could probably find the entire contents of my bank account in their couch cushions, nothing had changed. We made the same jokes, rehashed the same stupid stories and made fun of each other for the same old things. We even re-fought some of our old wrestling matches—only now we had two near-doctors to check on the losers and a few bankers to set odds. Those of us with work to do procrastinated like it was 2006. If TBS were still showing Saved by the Bell reruns, we would have watched; if the house we were staying in had a PS2, we would have played.
Each of us, no matter what we had done in the four intervening years, stepped right back into our old roles. Those who did best in college were still the smart ones; those who partied the most in college were still the crazy ones, regardless of any lifestyle changes they had made.
Of course there were some changes: Instead of taking bets on who would be first to get engaged, we paid off those bets. We wagered on who would be the first to have a kid, then cringed as we imagined our irresponsible buddy as a parent.
I talked to my father about the weekend, and he nodded knowingly. “It’s the same way when my friends and I get together,” he said, “and we’ve been out of college for 30 years.”
So hopefully I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
In all seriousness, Duke has given me a lot of gifts. An education, a ticket into a career as a doctor, some memories, a million free T-shirts. (And all it cost was nearly half a million dollars in tuition and fees plus a $20.07 senior gift!)
But mostly, Duke gave me friends, people to whom I intend to stay close for a long, long time. This is the greatest gift of all. I’m on campus all the time, and the Gothic Wonderland is nice. But a house in the Poconos filled with my friends really felt like home.
Because I’m not exactly the most outgoing person, I made my close friends through my fraternity, through random mornings spent watching TBS reruns and SportsCenter and impromptu hallway hockey games at night. Other people make friends in other ways— in class, at club meetings, in the cage in Shooters. It doesn’t matter how you do it.
But whether you have 18 weeks or three and a half years as an undergrad, make some friends. Work on the friendships you’ve already made. Share some common experiences because you’ll laugh at those memories in the future.
Your own graduation nightmare will come true all too soon, and those friendships will be the only link you’ll have to some of the best years of your life.
Alex Fanaroff is a fourth-year medical student. His column runs every Wednesday.
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