ELAINE GU
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Thursday, May 28, 2009

MY JOURNEY OF friendship at Uni began four years ago with the BC.

Call it "Birthday Celebration" or "Bitch Clique" or whatever else you want. Even this day, I'm still not at liberty to disclose what BC truly stands for.

For those of you who don't know, this was a "clique" that I was a member of my freshman year.

It consisted mainly of several girls in my class who wore miniskirts, decorated our lockers with obnoxious signs, and advertised our daily lives on flamboyant Xangas.

Looking back, I admit I thought we were by far the coolest girls back then. I thought the attention we got from the upperclassmen — from the flirting guys to the girls who dissed our dressing habits — made us better than everyone else in our class.

Even negative attention is still attention, right?

I honestly believed that certain people openly expressed their animosity toward us because they were jealous. I mean, jealousy does bring out hate. As some trashy celebrity once said, if people are going to talk about you, you might as well give them something to talk about.

Admittedly, the BC days were fun. We really got along well and were there for each other. Weekends were filled with sleepovers. I felt so comfortable with this group of people. We even had a BC government modeled off of the Roman republic. (Talk about beauty and brains, or so I thought at the time.)

Schism

But all good things come to an end. The summer before sophomore year, the "BC Schism," as many like to call it, took place. It was not pretty. Harsh words were exchanged, and there was plenty of hurtful backstabbing.

I admit I handled things really, really badly on my part. But whatever the case, I became mortal enemies with some of my previous best friends.

Sophomore year was not a good year. No matter how hard you try not to let things get to you, it's impossible to ignore the animosity of your enemies. Even though I would never have admitted it back then, I missed being friends with the people whom I called my enemies. They had their good qualities, and I just overlooked them for their flaws.

That year, I devoted myself to schoolwork and extracurriculars. I took eight classes, did sports, and spent a lot of time doing ExploraVision with a group of friends who had carried over from the BC. I felt overwhelmed all the time.

Fortunately, by junior year much of the open hostility was gone. I was able to go about my day without noticing the presence of these former "enemies" of mine. We even started exchanging a few words now and then.

No formal apology was ever given, but I feel that we're all on good bases now.

A new beginning

Junior year, I became friends with a new group of people — the ones who partied and didn't care about school quite as much as the people I was friends with sophomore year. To me, they represented fun and excitement. I wanted to start over.

I began going to parties every weekend with this new group of friends. It was fun for the most part, but I never felt like I truly belonged.

They already had strong bonds between each other, and I didn't feel that I could be a part of it. While I did enjoy their company, I still missed my old friends.

Come senior year, we toned down the parties. I felt like I was becoming better friends with these people, getting to know them on a deeper level.

But at the same time, I still didn't feel like one of them. I've always put my schoolwork and my extracurricular commitments before everything else.

I was tired of the comments about how I was a bum for blowing off hanging out with people because I had a cross country meet the next morning or for staying home almost all of winter break to work on the eighth revision of my college essays.

Lessons learned

Freshman year, I never would have imagined that the BC would break up. I thought we would be putting our senior handprints together. Looking back, I've realized that I've drifted between various friendship circles.

I guess what I've learned after five years is that people always change. But the good thing is, breakups between friends don't always have to be ugly. It's OK to move on, but there's no need to hold grudges against your old friends just because they are no longer who you thought them to be.

I have a tendency to see the flaws in people, which is partly why I've changed friends so many times. But I've learned that it's important to see the good in people. Every single person has some positive attribute, and it's not worth it to give up a friendship because your friend has some personal flaw.

Even if you do decide that you no longer want to associate with someone, you owe that person an explanation. I learned this the hard way. A lot of bad friendships and relationships in general are the result of lack of communication. By talking about it, you spare a lot of hard feelings. It's one thing to not be friends with someone, but it sucks to be enemies with an old friend.

Throughout my five years here, my priorities have changed a lot, and with them, so have my friendship circles. Maybe I'm too unwilling to compromise, maybe I'm too different. Whatever the case, even as a senior, I have yet to find my niche at this school. I've yet to discover just who I am as a person and to find that one friendship circle for me.

But I've realized that that's OK. Even though I don't have one best friend, I have a diverse group of people whom I hang out with. And most importantly, I'm happy with the way things are.

I thought long and hard about what I would write my final column about. I decided to share with you guys what I've learned about friendship because it's not one of those things that you can learn from a textbook.

So I would just like to take the time here to thank all of my friends, acquaintances, and not-so-great friends for showing me what I want to be and what I don't want to be.

And with that, I leave my parting words: Work hard in fitness, appreciate the work your teachers do, don't make excuses, beware of what you publish on the Internet, say "thank you" often, don't wear heels and a miniskirt together, appreciate the little things in life that make you happy, learn to leave regrets behind, and see the good in people.