Friendship Through the Years

Friendship is different in college. We don't choose from a minuscule pool. We don't adhere to curfews and other restrictions. We don't separate our academic and personal lives.

Above all, we don't share our grades.

Flashback to high school. Wherever you go, people know where you stand. Your rank. Standardized test scores. GPA to the hundredths place. To our teachers, the guidance counselors, other parents — any zealots of higher education — these numbers are our identity.

We are told that our friends — those smiling, sweater-clad, backpack-wielding figures — are not our friends at all. They are the competition. As our classmates they can, with an increase in GPA, instantly ruin our lives. Or with luck, snatch precious spots at colleges: the very meaning of life itself. They are clever, cutthroat, and conniving. They are the devil's henchmen.

At Princeton, we have entered a new culture. A culture where grades are a private matter, self-deprecation an art form and nosiness, social suicide. Competitive? Who's competitive? But we still talk about work — constantly, wearily, vaguely. "My GPA stinks." Right. That could mean anything. 3.3, 2.0? Gasp, not 3.9!!!

In high school, most of my friends were the people with whom I had every single class; we bonded under the label "smart kids." At Princeton, my friends don't know my history with the Educational Testing Service, my grades past or present, or whether or not I'm "competition." It doesn't matter, and it wouldn't make a difference. In a weird way, being at a place like Princeton allows me to relax.

But of course, we're still crazily competitive. It wasn't enough back then to be in honors classes, and now it's not enough to be at Princeton. Non-athletes sneer at athletes, engineers at A.B.'s, etc. People joke about the "closet genius" or the "closet dummy" in their social group, wondering where they stand among friends, classmates, living things.

So we still care. But since sharing grades is taboo, friendships are now less about achievements and more about shared ideals, viewpoints, and interests. IQ points won't win you friends at Princeton. We look past intelligence and see what else there is, if anything. We evaluate personality, character, values. Not pitted in direct competition with each other, we can be fully supportive — which, in some cultures, is what friends are.

And, understandably, this bubble where performance is irrelevant is also where people supposedly find their lifetime friends. People have even advised me not to "waste time maintaining any high school friendships." But although formed in an adverse environment, I haven't found those relationships to be disposable. There's something about the people I spent four years with in that crumbling cement box called my high school. Despite everything, we still liked each other.

Sometimes you do have to stop consorting with high school friends. Maybe GPA, doubly tyrannical and time-consuming, still rules your life. Maybe you're one of those people who tries to create a new self: "Katie" since conception but in college, "Kate." Maybe they actually did turn out to be the devil's henchmen.

But it's still nice to have friends who knew you in glasses, braces, and the band uniform that made you look like an eggplant. Friends who knew you when you almost died asking a boy to dance, when you calculated the days, hours, and minutes left till you got your license, when you didn't know what to do with a tube of lipstick any more than you would with a magic wand. And, most amazingly, when you actually woke up at six every morning.

Especially now that they're not the competition. Julie Park is a sophomore from Wayne, N.J. She can be reached at jypark@princeton.edu.