Friend Me

I am siicckk people! Home with the pooches with 3 different kinds of -itises.  Pretty much everything from the throat up is busted.  Ugh!  I know I started feeling sick last week but I have no doubt that my weekend festivities did not help the situation. 

It was a very fun but very tiring weekend.  I got a chance to see my girl Holden who I had not seen in about a year!  She moved from DC to Nashville about a year before I moved away and we actually only worked together for a few months but sometimes, you just really have a bond with people and Holden is one of those people. 

My girl Holden and ProMo busting a move in Vegas

In fact, most of the good friends I made in DC could be described that way.  As I've mentioned before, I only lived there for about a year and a half, but made some of my closest friendships there.  I think it just adds to what I love about that city!

Anyway, as I was doing the long drive back to the 'burg, I was thinking about how I have been lucky enough to live a lot of different places and meet so many fun and interesting people. I still tell stories about:

• my childhood and college friends
• my first "gang" of friends from graduate school (who knew engineering grad students were so fun?)
• my boys (and volleyball/football teammates) from my first job in Baltimore
• the nerdy-cool-fun work friends from NYC
• my book club and LLS girls in Baltimore
• and of course the LLS crew in DC

What I appreciate about all my good friends is that I can truly be myself around them.  They make me happy and no matter how much time has passed, I know I will spend my time with them laughing and talking for hours.  But as time goes on, the communication naturally becomes more sparse. Facebook has been an interesting tool.  Overall, I think it's been a positive one for me.  It has really helped me re-connect with so many of them: from my friends that I've known since I was 5, to family around the world and everything in between.  It's nice to know what is going on in their lives and the convenience can't be beat.

At the same time, what does it mean if we're re-connected but we still don't really communicate directly? We just "stalk" each other's profiles just to get a glimpse into what is going on in each other's lives? It's such an odd phenomenon but it's totally accepted. But really, it's the new standard of communication...facebook, twitter, RSS feeds...BLOGS!!

So where am I going with this?

I guess it should be obvious that I really value personal relationships and friendships.  And as we are quickly approaching another graduation, I am interested to see how this generation of college grads will deal with their "friendships." Most of my students have 1000 or more "friends" on Facebook and I wonder if the technology-centered-ness of this generation will help or hinder their ability to sustain their past friendships or even build new ones.  I certainly hope so.  Because I would really feel like I missed out if I didn't become as close as I did with my friends in the age before social networking.

Buddies...some of these friendships go back over 20 years, some just a few months!