friendship was what i learnt in law school

With the last week of law school coming to an end, I realise I am more sentimental about leaving this place than I expected.

I would say that my first year was my most exciting year. I was new to this world. And strangely for a introvert person like me, I quickly became acquainted with a group of interesting friends right from the beginning of the semester. I never really had to deal with loneliness or being awkwardly alone at the very beginning because I had them. We participated in activities together; we had outings together; we even had our own group page just for us. J was the chatty one, L was quiet and studious, T had a sweet smile, W was the intelligent one, C was the laid back one, J was the strange but funny one, Z was the cool lecturer, and V was the key that brought us all together. But somewhere, somehow, all of us just started to drift apart. We started having our own friends, our own lives. For some of us, we still have the random conversation once in a while, but for the others, it is just an awkward bump along the corridor. I am not much of a social butterfly so in a way it aggravates the situation – I don’t always make the effort to talk and I guess it just stretched the gap between us even further.

In my second year, there was this elective I took – Employment law. At this point of time, I started being more of a lone ranger. I sat in front. I ate my lunch alone. I went about my classes alone. But employment law did not only excite me, it brought me to two other like-minded people who I eventually became fast friends with, Y and P.

Throughout my second and third year, I was mostly preoccupied with activities. It was a stage of my life where I came, I saw, I conquered. I had my hands full with student activities, I was active with volunteerism and I baked at home every chance I had. I began to enjoy being alone, I did my work quickly in the faculty and barely lingered long in the campus. I guess it is during the bulk of these years that left my batch mates and people in general to view me as a lone ranger unmoved in her arrogant ways. But at this point of time, it didn’t really matter to me because being alone worked for me.

But as group work was inevitable in some courses, I started to click with people I had never really imagined I would get along with before. Y and P were two such people. But there were others too like M and H. M was a happy girl which always had something to cheer people up about and often would post funny things on my facebook wall. There were a few times M asked us to hang out and called H along. That is how I met H. I don’t know how and why but H, P, Y and me eventually became really good friends. I will never forget the times we had simply hanging out, chatting, cracking jokes and all four of us were truly happy friends.

Yet even that close bond started unravelling after a little more than a year.

I guess friendships are impermanent, just like life. We find friends along our journey but eventually we have to part when the time comes. I think I just want to settle with being happy I ever made some good friends in these four years of life. Expecting a friendship to last is maybe too much to ask, but simply enjoying it while it is, is something we should never deny ourselves.

Having said all that, I just want to end my life in law school with no ill-will. We might never meet again, but we might also just end up being working colleagues in future.

I would like to end this note with a quote: “Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.” – Flavia Weedn.