There’s not enough time!
I’m so lucky to have many friends from different schools. It’s sort of become a joke to some people, how I’m always bouncing around from crowd to crowd, but I don’t mind it - I’ve always detested cliques and looked to break them. Maybe it’s because I moved around so much as a kid, and I never really found a spot deep inside a clique.
If there was one thing I could change about this past Midwest Conference (or maybe about life…), it would just be to have more time - we could always use more time. Over the course of this year, I’ve gotten to know so many people, and I saw so many worlds collide at ITASA MWC. UIUC, Northwestern, Ohio State, TAF, UMich, TANG, you name it. And then I was busy meeting even more new people, both from these places, and I just hadn’t known them before, and from other places, say Michigan State, or Case Western.
It was at lunch when I got kind of overwhelmed. It was CRAZY to pick up food, and be able to talk with nearly every group I walked past. I had good friends in every group and I felt so loved to have them ask me to stay and chill with them.
At the end of the conference, I looked back and realized that I had a good time, but I really wanted to just spend time with people and chat about life. It’s such a basic thing, but it’s so fundamental to building relationships with other people.
We live in a world that encourages you to blindly truck forward and always be busy, but I don’t think that’s right, or healthy. I strongly believe that sometimes we need to just slow down, and take stock of where we are, and who we are.
While people in college just want to go out and party (and this is perfectly rational), in my book, there’s nothing like a late-night life-pondering session. I like getting to know people better, ever so slightly, every time we meet.
