It’s nearly midnight, and I just got off the phone with one of
my closest friends. She and I met while working as interns this
summer in Washington, D.C., and now she’s back at school in Tampa,
and I’m back here in St. Louis, staring at my computer screen,
forcing myself to start writing.

This commentary is my little “Welcome to SLU” gift for the
freshmen, but I don’t know what words of wisdom I have to offer
after three years here.

Besides, I suppose, the usual, such as: don’t take 8 a.m.
classes (you won’t go, even though high school started at 8 a.m.),
get involved and stay away from Del Taco. I’m stumped. I’m trying
to think of what I wish someone told me and what I wish I knew my
freshman year.

I vividly remember the summer before that year–my friends and I
were incredibly melodramatic about leaving. We were scared to death
that a few miles (or states) between us could break our
friendships, and if that happened, we’d absolutely die. I mean, who
else could possibly take the place of our friends from high school?
I can’t believe how much we’ve all grown since then.

Three years ago, I came to SLU with a na�ve certainty
that my friends from high school would be my dear friends for life.
After all, we created so many memories together in high school, and
the bond we had seemed unbreakable. I remember the nights we said
goodbye to each other one by one–the warm, humid nights spent on
front porches and in driveways promising, “It’s not goodbye, it’s
see you later.” Those were promises we truly believed we’d keep
forever.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of any of those high school
promises. But the bittersweet reality is that only a few of us
would manage to keep those promises in the forthcoming months and
years.

The fact is that college changes us. We grow and change in ways
we never imagined on those magical, tearful summer nights, and we
don’t usually have the foresight to realize that this growth is
inevitable.

It’s more than inevitable. It’s to be expected.

College is unique in the sense that it provides us with an
opportunity to become whomever we desire to be. For better or
worse, we become different people because of the experiences we
have and the people who touch our lives. We grow, which sometimes
means we grow apart from people we considered our dearest friends.
We keep some old friendships, but some quietly fade into memories,
and we are surprised when we don’t even mind.

It’s impossible for us to know who we are going to become, and
in turn, it’s impossible for us to know who we will call friends
tomorrow. Most of my closest friends are not the people I said
tearful goodbyes to four summers ago.

I’ve learned that you will never know who your friends will turn
out to be. Maybe your best friend will be the same person who was
by your side growing up. Maybe your best friend will be your loud
next door neighbor or the goofy kid who sat across the room in math
class.

Either way, I’ve learned that it doesn’t always matter if my
best friend was by my side growing up, it only matters if it feels
like that person always was.

I never realized how broad my circle of friends has become over
the years. Now that I sit and think about it, most of my close
friends are people whose paths crossed my own in a chance meeting
or in the fleeting few weeks of a semester. Looking back, I made
most of those friends because we took the time to get to know each
other, even when we didn’t know if we’d see each other much or at
all later down the line.

One of my old teammates in high school once said that friends
are the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. She was
right–friends bring out parts of ourselves that we never knew were
within us. The key to unlocking those hidden parts of ourselves is
having friends who challenge us, disagree with us and haven’t
walked the same paths we walked.

It’s easy to settle within the realms of our comfort zones, to
surround ourselves with people who act, think and dream exactly the
same ways we do. If we settle for that, we miss out on so many
experiences and people that just might touch our lives in a way we
never imagined.

That’s what I wish I knew my freshman year–that I was going to
change and so were my friends, but by just getting to know the new
people around me, I would open up a whole new world and a whole new
part of myself.

Sharon Turlek is a senior studying political science.