We talk about the realization that while you might think that having a lot of relationships in college will make you feel less lonely, it’s actually the few authentic relationships that give you more satisfaction. They conclude that quality is more important than quantity in interpersonal relationships, and that deeper relationships are more meaningful.
Relationships are something that any college student will be thinking about and reflecting on: we are meant to live with other people, and this nature becomes even stronger and more important within a community. For me, relationships were one of the things I struggled with the most after entering college.
Coming from an all-boys high school, I thought it would be easy to make friends, get along with people I didn’t see eye-to-eye with, and not have pretentious relationships. I also thought that my classmates would have a strong sense of community where we could share our hearts, lean on each other when things got tough, and help each other out. Plus, it was the best university with the best minds!
In this essay, I’m going to argue the idea that I’ve gained from my year at university, namely that you don’t have to try to know a lot of people to have a good relationship.
One of the first things you’ll encounter in college is a large number of relationships, because it’s a society of people from different parts of the world and with different personalities. The first basis for this argument is that having a large number of relationships in college can lead to loneliness. As minors, we spend three years under the care of our parents or guardians, following a structured high school curriculum without any real life concerns. This process is very demanding, so it entails a desire to lean on the people next to you, a desire to get through it together, and a relative decrease in selfishness. It also lays the foundation for genuine relationships because you’re together almost 24/7. In college, however, you’re living away from home and have to consider a number of practical issues. Money, grades, how you look to others, employment, the military, certifications, and more – you are now in charge of your own career, not a structured education. This leads to a relative increase in selfishness, which in turn leads to conflict, worry, and increased personal loneliness.
Of course, you may ask, isn’t it possible to form “multiple relationships” in high school as well, but the difference between high school and college comes down to the inherent difference between adults and minors, who, as I mentioned earlier, have to be more realistic and responsible about their lives at this point. Of course, high school students also have multiple relationships and make memories together, but they are less selfish and exclusive because they have the common goal of getting into college. They also spend a lot of time in the same building, so they are less likely to feel lonely because of their multiple relationships. College is more about transient encounters outside of class, such as clubs and activities, but high school is less lonely because you are in the same building all day, every day.
The second reason is that relationships are as much about environment as they are about conscious intentions. Spatial characteristics have a huge impact on relationships, and temporal characteristics also play a role in creating intimacy. In college, due to the objective nature of independent majors and free-choice classes, you often end up with a casual network of friends, which adds to your relative loneliness. I myself tried to connect with a lot of friends in the beginning, but it was a futile endeavor. I tried to get close to people I knew by name from various classes and briefly met at events, but the timing didn’t work out and it was difficult to make deep connections. Eventually, I realized that having a casual network of friends made it difficult to get real help when I was struggling or asking for it.
So I thought about it, and I tried to find an answer by experiencing all the different kinds of relationships I could: friends from the same university in the same area, the larger community, departmental and central clubs.
In the end, I came to a simple conclusion: “No matter where you go, there are a handful of like-minded people, and you just have to do the best you can with those few. No matter what I do, the people who will stay with me will stay with me, and the people who won’t stay with me won’t stay with me.” In some ways, it seems like I gave up on networking with a lot of people, but that’s exactly what I did.
In conclusion, I felt more lonely when I was networking with a lot of people, and the happy and warm side of human relationships was only felt when I was with a small group of like-minded people. In other words, having a large number of relationships is not conducive to loneliness in college. Of course, having a variety of relationships is not an absolute negative. We’ve only been alive for 20 years, and there will be countless people we’ll meet in the future. It’s a natural part of being human to meet a lot of people in the course of these fleeting years, and just as there will be some who are right for you, there will be many who are not.
Now, let’s keep it simple: you don’t need to get attached to people who aren’t right for you, people who aren’t trying to form a deep connection with you. Of course, I’m not talking about a relationship that’s going to save the day; I think there will come a time when that relationship will have its own positive aspects, and you need to be able to let it go. It’s not a bad idea to rule out the possibility that a friend who isn’t right for you for a while might end up being the right friend for you. That said, I’ve definitely noticed that relationships are somewhat arbitrary, but in the end, they’re formed based on the person and the person’s inclinations.
In other words, if you’re currently a college student and you’re feeling lonely and burned out, don’t get discouraged if you don’t have a lot of people around you – there’s someone out there for you, and I think the simple, genuine happiness you feel in that relationship, and the need to grow from person to person, will make your college experience more fulfilling if you have your own authentic relationships.
