I remember my first lunch at the University of Utah.
It was at this salad bar in the Union that no longer exists, and I had bought some kind of blue cheese salad, which was my first mistake. My second mistake was looking up what blue cheese actually was – and after that, I never had that salad again. Even though it was just a salad, it was honestly my last straw that day. It was one of my first days at the U, there were way too many people surrounding me in the cafeteria, I knew I was going to have to pull an all-nighter to finish my calculus homework and I had to climb the huge staircase leading up to the dorms.
For a while, the rest of my days at the U didn’t seem to get any better, and just became repeats of the same mistakes – gross lunch, late homework and the huge staircase waiting for me at the end of my day. Looking for a distraction, I joined the Chronicle.
Slowly and gradually, I came to realize that what I had been missing, and what was making my days exponentially grueling, was the fact that I was isolating myself, chasing a weird version of success that did not involve anybody but me — which is literally the opposite of the purpose of college. As I spent more time editing and meeting people at the Chronicle, it was like an entirely new version of college opened up for me, and I stopped being so afraid of reaching out to people. Suddenly, a few years down the line and now a few weeks away from graduation, I feel the most connected with the U and the community I have built for myself. Academics are definitely important, but what has been the most valuable to me while completing my assignments has been learning to build relationships and genuinely finding value in connection with others.
By genuinely finding value, I’m not talking about the compliments, nights out or even the days spent at the library together – I’m talking about finding people whose values align with yours, people who are open and thoughtful and smart in their own ways, people who inspire you to become a better version of yourself, pick up new hobbies, Oxford comma and think differently every time you interact with them. That’s who you should be friends with. It takes time to find them and it takes time to build and rebuild these relationships, and it’s worth every minute.
It’s shocking to say that my last lunch as a U student won’t be the nasty blue cheese salad I started with, but will instead be a strawberry lemonade with a falafel wrap at a table filled with the friends that I had no idea would make their way into my life just a few years ago.
