Do I have friends?
Auntie Matter, I don’t think I made any close friends at MIT
I’m about to graduate with my PhD, MEng, and SB from MIT. While these years have taught me a lot and brought both pain and delight, there is a part of me that remains very sad because I don’t think I made any true close friends at MIT with whom I’ll have a lifelong connection, as though they were like siblings I could call anytime and share what’s on my mind. My true best friends are still my childhood friends from high school whom I talk to regularly and see every year when we all go home for Christmas. Those childhood friends, not MIT friends, are the ones I connect with the most and feel like they’re my family.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not an introvert and have had great times with my MIT friends, but all of the people I hung out with during undergrad/MEng moved far away and we basically lost contact. (I should say I never had a big friend group where everyone knew each other, more like individual friends from various activities/groups.) As a PhD student, I made a whole new set of friends at MIT. But these grad school friends and I will be in different cities after graduation and I just don’t feel like we’re close enough to stay personally connected on a regular basis given the distance. Sure, we see each other a lot now as students, go to events together, grab lunch together, etc. but they're not the people I could talk to for hours and just open my heart to, unlike my very close childhood friends. I hear stories about other people making lifelong friends in college, those friends being groomsmen/bridesmaids and godparents to each other’s kids, and it makes me sad that I didn’t meet anyone at MIT with whom I can share a special lifelong bond like that. I’d love to have some best friends from my post-high-school adult life, and I really thought I could find those people at MIT, but now that I’m leaving MIT, I feel really bad like maybe I just missed good opportunities to find friends.
— friend seeker
Dear Friend Seeker,
Can I give you a little tough love? Breathe for “yes,” backflip for “no.”
Okay, I’m seeing no backflips, so here are my takes on the situation:
You have an extremely narrow definition of the word “close.”
You don’t have close friends from MIT because you don’t want to have close friends from MIT.
Even if you’re right, and you just didn’t find your people at the ’tvte, you’ve got many, many more years to find many, many more friends in the outside world.
And you will.
Let’s address these one by one. First, you have an extremely narrow definition of the word “close.” Sibling-level? That’s crazy! Most people have, what… one sibling? Two? You’re not going to find 15 siblings, at MIT or elsewhere. However, what you can find are different friends who fill different niches. Some of those people will be navel-gazing-conversation-worthy. Some won’t. Some will match your sense of humor, interests, or views. Some won’t. They can all be “close” in different ways.
Next, you don’t have close friends from MIT because you don’t want to have close friends from MIT. You’ve gotten out of touch with your undergrad friends because you chose not to stay in touch with them. If you lose your connections to your grad school friends, it will be because you chose not to stay connected. And you don’t feel like you can open your heart to these people because you’ve chosen not to open your heart to them. This isn’t a problem if you didn’t want to become close to them, but any sentence that starts with “I just don’t feel…” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Life is large and unexpected. You can grip the wheel a little less tightly; maybe you’ll like the back roads.
Nevertheless… even if you’re right, and you just didn’t find your people at the ’tvte, you’ve got many, many more years to find many, many more friends in the outside world. You’re graduating from a PhD program that you likely started right after undergrad, so you’re probably… 27? Maybe 30? Dude, there is so, so much life left to live. Have you ever read the New York Times’ Weddings section? Do you know how many people meet their life partners way after school ends? Can you guess how many more people meet running buddies, board game compatriots, friendly-ish political-debate-havers, or, yes, sibling-adjacent close friends after graduation? Can you even guess?
Last, and certainly not least: and you will. This format worked better before I thickened the list with explanations, so let me write it more explicitly: you will find close friends. You are fun, you are thoughtful, and you are lovable. Why do I say this so confidently? Because you’re able to maintain relationships with your childhood friends whom you only get to see a few times a year. Because you make friends wherever you go, whether that’s in undergrad or your PhD program. Because you’re a human, and human beings make friends. All you need to do, dearest Friend Seeker, is to realize that not every friendship is going to look the same, that “closeness” is an arbitrary metric, and that these two facts are beautiful, exciting, and inherent to the game.
Lucy Dacus once sang, “You can't feel it for the first time a second time.” You won’t find your childhood friends again, some connections will flare out, and nothing lasts forever. But if you want them bad enough, some things can last for a very long while. You just have to act like you want them.
Your friend,
Auntie Matter