Season two of HBO’s Girls ended with an ill-mannered, psychotic, and distraught Hannah as she attempts to salvage her writing career in her latest writing task. She begins her saga, “A friendship between college girls is grander and more dramatic than any romance.” Girls’ writer, Lena Dunham, leaves Hannah’s obligatory novel unhinged for watchers as the season ends with no explanation for the future of Hannah or her writing career. Since this episode, I have imagined some of the things Hannah could’ve been trying to portray via writing through her mental breakdown and have ultimately related since the commencement of my college career.
Ultimately my thought processes have lead me to question, what is it that allows us to define the meaningful relationships with our college friends? What is it that allows us to define ourselves as adults throughout our college careers? What is it about college that pulls us out of our sheltered and juvenile ways?
Since my earliest days, I can remember strolling the streets of Greenwich Village with my parents and smiling at all of the NYU students. They were cool, trendy, upbeat, and always seemed to be in a hurry to make it to some fantastic event or show or dinner party. Realizing I would be one of them somewhere, someday made my college search process effortless and un-regrettably rushed the high school experience.
College was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel, but I realized it was so much more than what I had always imagined it to be. College gave me, “me”: the “me” I always wanted to be. The friends I always wanted to have. The experiences I always thought I would experience, the chance to lead and succeed, and the chance to explore my limits on many academic and social fronts. The cause of this obliterating happiness and my epiphany of a realization stems from the fact that it is who you surround yourself that allows you to blossom into the individual you want to be. Without her college friends, Hannah feels lost. She has no motivation to continue with her writing career as she finds that she and her friends are placed in all different locations post graduation. Finding yourself intertwining your life with others allows you to become comfortable in order to push your boundaries. Everyday my best friends push me to my absolute limits, and it is always reciprocated. These people want to see you succeed. Your commonalities become more than your area code and testable limits of underage alcoholism in grungy basements every weekend. As cliché as it is, these people are the people that see you at your worst and your best. They are with you through every moment of each minute of every day. They know exactly what events trigger what moods, and they know details about you that you would never pick up about yourself. They can yell at you when you’re being an absolute pest about a boy who will absolutely never ever treat you well, and they can stand in a full-length mirror with you and remind you when your preppy tendencies are being mistaken for a 40-year-old mom from the Connecticut suburbs. They can tell that it is truly your hair that was left on the shower walls and they can tell when you need a bag of Cape Cod Salt and Vinegar Chips. But ultimately, they know your “story” better than their own sometimes. College becomes the gateway to the grandeur of adulthood. It’s a slim slice of what it all amounts to. What that “is” remains the confusion of the unknown, but having a friend by your side while you’re trying to figure it out provides you with the confidence to start putting the puzzle pieces together. Hannah ultimately rekindles her relationships with her three friends from college and realizes that they too are squirming like worms after a rainstorm in order to finally figure out what their futures may hold.
