2008 Woodie Awards
On the Other Side of the Fence
Kaly Thayer '10
Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Portfolio
I live off campus, in a nice place that my friends and I work hard to maintain both materially and emotionally. What I mean is that it takes work to make the place both look nice and feel nice. It's the feeling nice part that's the harder of the two, mostly in that there's more to making a home than picking out the furniture and trying to match the curtains with the walls, which is much harder than it sounds.
The biggest problem we've had isn't the décor or the grocery schedule, the checklist of chores or even the monthly rent. No, our biggest problem is that we're farther away from our guy friends in Fennell than Harkins on a snowy day. Most of our friends live on lower campus and can't find it in themselves to make it over to just across the street from the priory much more than once or twice a week. Though we see each other in class, and occasionally in transit between classes, we don't go to Ray together, nor meander back to one dorm or the other when the day is over. Instead, when we walk out of classes, my housemate and I usually go one way while our friends go the other.
This sort of thing would normally lead to a disillusionment of the darkest kind, that which frequents the titles of LiveJournal posts, Facebook statuses, AIM away messages, and angry Twitter texts. We would bemoan how shallow our friends are for not spending time with us now that we're more than a five-minute walk away, for forgetting about us because we aren't convenient or close any longer, for socially moving on because they can't be bothered to remember that we're here, just on the other side of the fence. But that hasn't been the case.
This situation has more than changed our taste in furniture and home cooking; it's forced us to be social. Friendships are no longer the comfy, casual I'll-hang-out-with-you-because-you're-there kind of relationships: They take effort, and time, and even a little bit of planning (God forbid!). When we have people over for dinner or to watch TV, for a movie night or someone's birthday, it isn't a mess of people jumbled into someone's suite munching on scavenged Ray cookies, but a group of friends we care about sitting on our couches and chairs or rugs, eating a dinner we worked hard to cook, enjoying themselves in a home we care about. All of us have realized that just like our house, our relationships take time and effort too.
The biggest problem we've had isn't the décor or the grocery schedule, the checklist of chores or even the monthly rent. No, our biggest problem is that we're farther away from our guy friends in Fennell than Harkins on a snowy day. Most of our friends live on lower campus and can't find it in themselves to make it over to just across the street from the priory much more than once or twice a week. Though we see each other in class, and occasionally in transit between classes, we don't go to Ray together, nor meander back to one dorm or the other when the day is over. Instead, when we walk out of classes, my housemate and I usually go one way while our friends go the other.
This sort of thing would normally lead to a disillusionment of the darkest kind, that which frequents the titles of LiveJournal posts, Facebook statuses, AIM away messages, and angry Twitter texts. We would bemoan how shallow our friends are for not spending time with us now that we're more than a five-minute walk away, for forgetting about us because we aren't convenient or close any longer, for socially moving on because they can't be bothered to remember that we're here, just on the other side of the fence. But that hasn't been the case.
This situation has more than changed our taste in furniture and home cooking; it's forced us to be social. Friendships are no longer the comfy, casual I'll-hang-out-with-you-because-you're-there kind of relationships: They take effort, and time, and even a little bit of planning (God forbid!). When we have people over for dinner or to watch TV, for a movie night or someone's birthday, it isn't a mess of people jumbled into someone's suite munching on scavenged Ray cookies, but a group of friends we care about sitting on our couches and chairs or rugs, eating a dinner we worked hard to cook, enjoying themselves in a home we care about. All of us have realized that just like our house, our relationships take time and effort too.
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