I’ve tried to explain this to incoming freshmen, because on a campus of 40,000 students, people get worried that they will get lost in a sea of people and never be able to hold down friends. Even friends at other, smaller, schools don’t seem to understand, the large student population deterred them from even applying to UIUC.
All of us on campus know that this is far from true. Just in your daily walk to class, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:40 a.m. you take the same route, walking about the same pace and will see essentially the same people. You may not know any of them personally, but someone you know probably does. In freshman sociology we learned about the actual science behind the game Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon. For example, I am two degrees from the Footloose star, Kevin Bacon was in a movie with John C. Reily who knows my mom. It is my belief that everyone on this campus is six degrees from each other, if not less. It is a small, small campus after all, and you can find the connections between you and the stranger sitting next to you in six people or less.
Within this past week, I met a friend of a friend, who introduced me to his friend, who had apparently be texting one of my best friends all day (a little confusing I know). After awhile, he realized that he recognized me from the countless photos of us together on Facebook. If that is not perfectly timed proof that this is not a small campus after all, I don’t know what is. So how do you deal with that? You’re not going to stop having fun at Joe’s because you see your welcome week hookup from two years ago or drop a class because that one annoying girl from your freshman dorm is in it.
Here’s my thought: just like the Its A Small World boat ride at Disneyland is mildly creepy and painful, it's a necessary part of the trip; it's full of nostalgia and you have to roll with it, wait in the line and go for the ride. That’s the same perspective we all have to take to seeing all of these people we may feel awkward seeing. Find some little flicker of nostalgia in that heinous drunk kid from your freshman dorm or seeing that random person from sleep away camp when you were twelve. That’s all you can really do, so you might as look back on it kind of fondly and make the situation a little more laughable. Hey, its a world of laughter and a world of tears, so you might as well make it more the former than the latter, because its a small world after all.
