Sometimes when you make friends in high school, that is all they will be – just friends you had in high school. But sometimes, they are more than that. Sometimes they are even the kind of people you can recreate your own version of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” with.
During the summer before my freshman year of college, my best friends and I decided to create something remarkable to share amongst ourselves. We were no longer joined by the uniform and traditions of our all girls Catholic high school or our proximity in addresses, but we were spread amongst New Jersey, New York City, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, and I was off to Syracuse University. As I was the first person to move into their dorm, I had the honor of having the “C7 Journal” first. The journal is by no means ordinary, as it does not belong to just one person, nor is it something private and meant to be hidden in the bottom of our drawers.
The rules for the journal are as follows:
- When you are in possession of the journal, write/paste in it whatever you wish to share – thoughts, cares, concerns, Friday night escapades.
- After two to three weeks, you are to find the local post office and mail the journal to the next person on the rotation (approximate mailing cost is $5).
- Whoever receives the journal next will then write their accounts in the journal and feel free to comment on previous entries (through the use of colored/identity coded sticky notes).
- Repeat until the journal has reached all seven universities (approximate cost is priceless bliss).
Alas, we had something special. Although we texted each other hourly while in our new environments at college and we always spent time together during our breaks, the journal serves a symbol of the strength and uniqueness of our friendship. We shared stories about weird roommates, adjustments to the somewhat subpar dining hall cuisines, embarrassing things that happened to us that we would only want the “C7” to know about, and some of our adaptations to the frigid and snowy climates we had relocated to. Granted, we instantly knew what everyone was up to solely based on the fact that we all own iPhones and are active on social media, but what about when the messages were deleted?
Throughout our freshman year of college, our friendship had changed – and for the better. Our distances brought us even closer together and we not only matured, but we learned from each other. We can get together for a girls’ night and flip through the carefully (made of all recycled material) decorated journal to recount such pivotal and coming-of-age points in our lives. It is amazing to me that so many of the thoughts and fears we had during our first year in college are now preserved in this journal that is all ours. If it wasn’t for the journal there would not have been a two page long comical explanation on how I ended up in the emergency room due to a piggy back race gone wrong (as it was a required orientation activity) accompanied by my lucid and fresh thoughts and feelings on the embarrassing incident that had just happened to me.
The traveling journal of my friends and I is something personal and meaningful that I wish everyone could experience a piece of. Whether your group's sentiment comes from Netflix-ing together, baking together, vacationing together, or Snapchatting like there’s no tomorrow, keep it up. When you start your first year of college it is important to remember your roots. No one will know you like the people who have seen your transformation from a recent middle school graduate to a college bound adult. They know your history and how you achieved your most current accolade. You should not let these people slip out of your lives just because you no longer sit next to each other in math class or each lunch together on the daily. Keep your sisterhood (whatever that may mean for you and your friends) alive and make sure it travels, too.
