Paper-machéd Body Parts, Walks with Frying Pans and All-Night Long Conversations: The (Always Dramatic) University Years

Saying goodbye is never easy and, in a way, the more practise you have at it, the worse it gets. As my graduation draws closer, I’ve taken the opportunity to spend as much time with my friends as possible, doing as much as possible and have also used the time to consider just what has made university the adventure it has been. It is, of course, these friends and so this rather rambling post is to say, I guess, why they are so important to me and to thank them for all they’ve done for me, whether or not they realise it.

I remember starting university and being told by family friends and my parents that it was just how Evelyn Waugh described it in Brideshead Revisited through advice given to Charles by his cousin, ‘You spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first.’ And that the friends I would make in my first few weeks of university would not be the friends I kept but rather time would lead them to me. Whether or not they were right with the first statement I don’t know but they were with the second. The people I call my closest friends from university I mostly met after my first term and those of them I did meet in the first term I did not become firm friends with them until later in the year, baring my flatmate. There is a panic, when you start university, to make friends as quickly as possible, fearing being left out. Everybody scrambles to try and get to know people and pretend they are good friends until later on in the year, or even the years to follow, they find the friends most like them. Much like school, I found myself feeling out of place and a little awkward and uncomfortable in my fresher’s term when making friends. It is only when I look back to my second and third term of first year, the evenings I spent my group of friends, getting to know each other, that I remember how relaxed I felt in their company compared to the people I spent time with in the first term. Having got to the end of university, these rather unhinged, over-dramatic, kooky, understanding, wonderful, mad, weird, intelligent, arty people are the ones I’m most terrified might somehow disappear from my life because they are most like me. Not the same, but similar enough and understanding enough that nobody feels like an unwelcome entity or a surplus part or, most importantly, different. 

As drama students, being the ridiculously highly-strung creatures society dictates we must be, you don’t fit into the mould society carves out for most that go into higher education, you don’t think about jobs in terms of a 9-5 with a high income, a nice house in the ’burbs by the time you’re thirty-five, investments and five year plans. As I said to my housemate earlier on today, I just want to make theatre and get paid for it. A straight forward desire, wanting to earn money doing what you love. Easy if you know the right people in the theatrical world, almost impossible if you don’t. Performing and creating performances and living outside of the boxes most of society want to be in, being pretentious and knowing you’re pretentious and a ‘drama geek’ as you quote The Seagull when you do shots and have in-depth theatrical conversations when drunk, being prepared to be penniless just so you can continue with the unending, all-consuming passion that is the theatre; sharing these desires, interests and passions have formed bonds tighter than I expected, more forgiving, more protective and in tune. I haven’t found the kind of sisterhood I did at boarding school but instead I found what I’d been looking for and not even realised, people like me and people I didn’t feel different to. And that’s all thanks to university which, ironically, I didn’t originally want to go to. Amazing really, that going to higher education because it was the done thing gave me what I’d always wanted. And I hope to Heaven and back that I don’t ever lose that. A friend said to me and two others a couple of weeks ago, ‘so, how long do you think we’ll be friends?’. ‘Forever’ the three of us replied, automatically and simultaneously. I hope we’re not wrong because the friends I’ve made at university, highly-strung, unhinged, weird, understanding and sometimes infuriating, are friends I don’t just want but need. Unlike my friends from school, my almost ‘sisters’, I don’t have a guarantee our relationships won’t unwind. Or maybe I do but I just don’t realise it. Either way, I’m terrified.

One of my friends said to me, ‘you’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet, we all do’. I agree with her. To a point. Yes, you are the only person responsible for keeping you standing. But when you get knocked down, which you will, you need people to put their hands out for you to take and use to haul yourself back up, people who make you want to haul yourself back up and assure you it’s ok to stand up again. Because as much as you can stand up by yourself, it’s going to be pretty lonely if you’ve done so and found there’s nobody waiting for you, nobody to stand besides, nobody to hold hands with. If when you’ve stood up, you’re all alone, you’re going to start wondering what you stood up for. And if you’re standing alone, you’re a lot easier to knock off your feet in the first place.

 I’m forever grateful for the past three years, the lessons I’ve learnt and the people that pulled me along when these lessons knocked me down and helped me get back up on my feet again. University has not only given me wonderfully mad friends but has taught me more about myself than I imagined as well as given me a degree and the opportunity to act in some great plays. But if I could pick just one thing to take from all of it, it would be the friends, the friends I stayed up all night of the 2010 election with, eating bacon sandwiches at 4am, the friends I went wandering in the fields and woods with a frying pan with, the friends I begged to wake up and come get pancakes and hash browns at six am, the friends I’ve cried to, the friends I’ve acted with, the friends I’ve paper-machéd parts of our bodies with, the friends I’ve ordered pizza at noon with, still merry from the night before, the friends I’ve wrapped in cling film to look like sperm, the friends I’ve stayed up all night watching bad television and having heart-to-hearts with until the sun rises and they have work, the friends who have put up with my numerous breakdowns over chips and chicken and diet cokes and pizzas with, who walked me home after, who invited me along to their party in the woods, who I go on abundant trips to Nandos with, who sent me a text at the end of a night telling me I looked nice, who can read me like a book, who laugh at the same stupid things I do, who call me deranged or threaten to push my face into the dirt ‘with affection’, who understand me as much as anybody can, who have the same passions, the same interests and desires, who love me despite my issues, who love each other despite everybody else’s issues. The other stuff made university good, my friends made it great. And to them I am eternally indebted.