14 Apr 2021

It’s an unexpected and kind of amazing part of the way your friendships develop in the years after high school, when you discover that the people you spent years sharing a uniform, lunch spot, timetable and PE teacher with have moved on to become a bunch of experts in strange and wonderful fields.

 

The friend who grew up with autographed Dr Harry posters on her wall can now advise you on whether it’s normal for your dog to be eating your lawn or making that noise, and now that she’s got her own place she’ll probably have new animals for you to look at every time you visit (because someone was giving away a lizard and she’s never had a lizard before and there’s room next to the ferret cage).

You might know someone who can translate the labels on the Japanese snacks you always wonder about at the supermarket, a friend in IT who can fix your broken laptop, people who invite you to their art shows or violin concerts, or a guy who brings his fancy camera along to take photos of everyone at your birthday dinners.

Some in-depth analysis of his latest texts? I’m there – with the same enthusiasm and interpretive methodology I bring to 17th century metaphysical poetry.

As well as helping each other out, there’s also the joy of just getting to be part of another kind of life now and then. It feels devastating at first when a best friend moves somewhere far away, but then you find you have an excuse to visit their new city, as well as a place to crash and some brunch recommendations. Or maybe you’ll be invited for a weekend at someone’s little agricultural college where they have horses and a big help-yourself student vegetable patch.

There’ll be friends who stay near you too, of course, and you’ll get to sit on their bedroom floor helping to cut out laminated teaching materials while hearing what an absolute menace the Year 2s are being this week, or meet them in town after their shift at the restaurant and listen to stories about all the horrible and lovely people they’ve had to wait tables for.

It’s definitely cool to meet people through your studies or your work who are passionate about the same things you are, who understand the particular struggles and joys of trying to make it in your chosen field. But it’s also so much fun to keep in touch with the old gang and watch them all doing their own weird and wonderful thing. When you meet up with them for lunch one day a few years after graduating and shake your head in amazement going, "how do you know so much about Neolithic hunting tools?", while they’re like, "tell me more about the International Phonetic Alphabet!" (kidding, I’m still waiting for someone to ask me that), you’ll be doing your bit to make sure we all stay curious, aware and open-minded about all the ways there are to live in this world.

Written by Megan Koch