University friends: genuine confidantes or glorified drinking buddies? Two gair rhydd writers share their opinions
Harriet Jameson
As my final year at university draws to an end I have become quite nostalgic about my time in Cardiff. It feels like all the conversations I have had with my friends recently have begun “Do you remember that night in the second year…” and ended with “I can’t believe how quickly three years has gone.” But the more memories that I relive from the last three years, the more cynical I have become about the student dream and the friendships that this ‘dream’ produces.
In my first year at Cardiff I was the stereotypical fresher. I lived a life that revolved around hangovers and Neighbours. My raison d’etre was to drink, dance, and have a good time with my new friends. I embraced the whole fresher experience with open arms, and with the help of multiple Tequila slammers I quickly made lots of new friends. With my new friends I would party until the early hours and then stay up ‘til the sun came up talking about our favourite kids TV shows, discussing the merits of pogs and singing Wonderwall.
Because of my anti-social drinking habits I had an amazing social life. I had more friends than I ever had at school and I was out practically every night of the week. Being the only person from my school to apply to Cardiff I quickly got to know a lot of people, which was fantastic, but despite knowing a lot of people, there were only a few that I ever really knew.
Perhaps the problem here is the term ‘friend’. Looking back, the friends I spent hours with necking VK Traffic Lights (cherry, orange, apple) and dancing to Queen were more binge-buddies than friends, but maybe even the term ‘buddy’ has connotations that are too strong.
Once the hangover of the first year wore off, the majority of the friendships I made during Freshers’ began to fade also. In the first year if you bumped into a drinking-buddy conversation would be easy as you could relive the previous night’s antics and comment accordingly. But by the third year the relationships with binge-buddies have degenerated to drunken hugs in Solus, followed by a quick dash to the toilet with the realisation you have absolutely nothing to say to that person.
The majority of my interaction with my binge-buddies has now deteriorated into an exchange of occasional facebook messages that are generally the result of an interesting status or birthday notification. If I bump into a former binge-buddy in the street, I often opt to ignore the person rather than face awkward small talk in the middle of Park Place.
I have made friendships at university that are worthwhile. I have made friends who I will invite to my wedding, and will maybe even be godparents to my children.
But the sad truth is that no matter how much we have been through together (family bereavements, mumps and dodgy landlords), even my closest friendships are borne from binge-drinking.
I have loved my time as a student at Cardiff, and in particular I have loved the social life, but it is quite a worrying realisation that I have met the majority of my friends because of the culture of binge drinking.
Emma Davies
I love being at uni. I love it all; I love being in Cardiff, socialising and hell, if I’m being geekily honest, I even love the lectures. If nothing else, they give me something to complain about when I’m forced to get up in time for – shock! Horror! – a ten o’clock start. What I love most, though, are the people I’ve met here.
I’ve met a range of people that, back at college in Exeter, I never thought I’d get to know and love. At home, my friends are all into roughly the same things as I am – we like the same sorts of music, we go to the same places, we’re friends with the same people. That’s the way you fall into friendships at college, and I wouldn’t change them for the world. Here? Well, here it’s a different social order altogether.
My current housemates are a rough amalgamation of flatmates and honorary flatmates from last year: people I was arbitrarily thrown together with, yet have formed the strongest of bonds with. House T in Talybont North has a lot to answer for.
At the start of that daunting first evening in halls, sat alone in my little cell of a room, I thought I’d be on my own in there forever. I think that everyone feels a bit like that. Within fifteen minutes I was in the midst of a large group of people (the majority of whom I’ve never seen since) and, most importantly, within a few weeks myself and my flatmates were firm friends.
All of this mainly came about without the help of alcohol. I’m not dissing booze here – if I’m being honest, I’m quite an unashamed fan of it – it’s just not really like that with my housemates and I.
We’re all into such different things that organising even something as simple as a Monday night out (that perennial touchstone of student life) would be a gargantuan act of negotiation and compromise; I’d be rooting for Fun Factory, somebody else would want Tiger Tiger, a few more would suggest a trip to Oceana and there’s always someone or other who fancies a night in.
Unless it’s somebody’s birthday (birthdays obviously meaning that you get to overrule everybody else), we just tend not to bother.
This isn’t to say that we don’t socialise, or even that we don’t go out. We all go out to varying degrees, but just with other people. We’ve accepted that, while we may be thick as thieves, we have other drinking buddies. We do other things instead: we go to the cinema, we cook roast dinners (which tend to take about an hour to eat, as we never quite get the timing right for all the elements) and, centrally, we play on Mario Kart. We play on that game all the bloody time.
Even with the friends that I do go out with a lot, alcohol doesn’t necessarily constitute a cornerstone in our relationship – more of an additional building block.
Yes, I’m often found clutching my head on a Tuesday/Thursday morning lecture, recounting with my coursemates the events of the night before, but if you take into account the number of hours per week we spend together in lectures, the drunk times suddenly look a lot smaller in proportion. And this is before you take into account the time we spend socialising without drinking.
University is that mythical time in your life in which anybody older loves to tell you that you’re making friends that you’ll keep for life. In the future, what is it that I’ll remember?
Will it be the games/endurance tests of Centurion, the treks round Cathays for Crusade and Carnage, the ridiculously toxic hangovers? I’m going to put my money on no, especially given that they’re already a bit hazy around the edges.
Instead, I’d like to think that it’ll be the trips to Roath Park to act like kids in the playground, the “barbecues” in the lounge in the rain, the endless, stupid catchphrases with roots largely in either Borat or pure filth. Call me the eternal optimist, if you like.
I know the difference between a drinking buddy and a friend. The drinking buddies are there when the drinks are flowing, and that’s certainly fun. But to walk in from a bad day and have someone give you a hug before you’ve even had to ask? That’s a friend.
1. Jamie
Harriet – do you not think it’s more important that you did meet these friends, regardless of how you met them?
2. Mark
I don’t think the phenomena of the casual friend who is alcohol related is a uniquely University trend. In fact, I know it’s not. From personal experience I know that similar things can be said for work colleagues, in every job I’ve had I’ve become pretty close to a few people and these friendships were often affirmed with alcohol (not unsurprising since most of the jobs were either in the on or off trade) and then when I moved on to fresher pastures those friendships faded and the process begun again. The same can be said for people I’ve known throughout Uni, like most people as an undergrad I became good mates with the people I was in the majority of my lecturers with, but, with one notable exception, I fell out of contact with them all, that is not to say I didn’t value those friendships at the time and I hoped they valued mine or if I saw them I wouldn’t like to catch up over a drink, but life moves on and so do friendships.
In another respect my University experience my different to most regarding friendships, most of my core group of core friends all went to Cardiff University and the few who didn’t stayed in close contact with us going to visit them in their universities and vice versa. So in a way I like to think I had the best of both worlds, like anyone else I formed some new and exciting friendships in my time in University, a handful of which I hope will continue into my old age, but I also had my real mates around me, the people who I progressed to adulthood with and who I can rely on without fail or question. The type of friend that I can go without seeing on a regular basis for an age, years even, and then sit down over a drink without a hint of awkwardness as if I had seen them just yesterday. That, I think, is the true testament of friendship, for me at least.
So I think your both right, in uni, like any work or social environment, you inevitably become friends with the people you mix with on a regular basis and in many cases social inhibitions are removed with the help of copious amounts of alcohol further helping to build bonds of friendship for as long as the personal contact remains. When that contact breaks, e.g. when you leave uni or leave for a new job, it’s highly likely that most if not all of those friends you had made in that environment with cease to become friends as the things that bonded you together – a shared education or work coupled with alcohol and socialising – end, couple this with the uni experience where after the course most of these mutual friends will go entirely separate ways, it is not surprising that one loses contact. Having said that it is not to say that real, meaningful and long lasting friendships that will be with you for years, even a lifetime, cannot be formed in University, it’s just unlikely that there will be all that many, which, I suppose, is nothing to be fearful over, one can only have so many true friends and these must be treasured, the rest just come and go as we meander through life and must be enjoyed when we have them.