During a recent phone call, one of my old friends mentioned his pledge brothers had taken to calling him by his initials. Despite his fondness for his new title, I informed him I would not, under any circumstance, refer to him as anything other than the name I had called him for the last 15 years we’ve known each other.
This is not the first time a childhood friend of mine has returned from college with a new nickname. While visiting a high school classmate over spring break, it actually took me a few moments to understand the girl her new friends were referring to as “Kat” was actually my old friend, Katy.
In theory, it’s not a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around: you meet different people in college. And different people are going to find different things in common, create new inside jokes and maybe even adopt a new moniker. But for some reason, the idea that someone out there who I don’t know is changing the way my friends see themselves, in even a minor way such as a nickname, threw me for a moment.
There is no doubt in my mind that my impending return home for the summer caused unusual trepidation of these new nicknames. While short breaks and the occasional visit gave me previews of the ways in which college has changed my old friends, seeing everyone back together in the same place for a summer is an entirely different experience. I’m apprehensive that in trying to reconceptualize my group of friends after a year apart, I may find some no longer fitting their older, recognizable molds.
Going home means immediate exposure to the changes in all my friends, changes in my old group dynamic and — perhaps scariest — changes in myself. It’s unnerving to think a group of people I grew up with may not be the people I have the most in common with anymore. And I certainly wouldn’t want to discover our friendships were not so much ground in our similarities, but our shared experiences.
It would be silly to tell myself the changes my friends and I experienced in our first year of college — whether subtle or as obvious as a name change — won’t alter our dynamic.
But it’s just as silly to think a 15-year relationship must be abandoned because a friend isn’t exactly the same person he or she was 9 months ago. Though the idea still makes me somewhat uncomfortable, I’ve concluded if a friendship was worth maintaining for so long, it is certainly is worth working to maintain it in the face of change.
Kristin’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.murtha@cavalierdaily.com.
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