I get it. As a senior myself, I won’t sugarcoat it for you: it’s hard to see the logic of starting a friendship with someone mere months before you know you’ll leave. Welcome to college.
But really, think about it. Whether you got to be friends through TAG and spent four years traipsing across campus together, or you just met this person in Dr. Strait’s literature class you’re taking as an elective and she’s graduating in four months, you know you’re not going to see her forever.
Maybe you think that’s cynical, but I’m not saying you shouldn’t be friends with people because you know you’re eventually heading out. I actually suggest the opposite! Make friends with people because you’re all going to leave.
That’s how becoming an adult works. Your friendships aren’t limited to the high school you attended or your hometown; when we graduate and scatter across the four winds, if you truly value a friendship and take the time (and sometimes money) to invest in it, your friendship will last. Adults don’t avoid a friendship with someone because they don’t live next door; adults grab a flight or hop in the car and drive seven hours after getting off work Friday to be able to spend a weekend together if a relationship really matters to them. Using the excuse “I’m graduating” as a reason not to make new friends is a lame cop-out.
As a senior already thinking about submitting resumés and grad school applications and the reality of moving out, I understand the concept of having one foot planted at Asbury and one foot out the door, ready to plant in the next employer’s office. But I challenge upperclassmen to keep that one foot that is still firmly on Reasoner Green deeply involved in the heart of Asbury. After all, once you leave, there is no more life like the one you’ve been living for the last four years. Choose to intentionally pour into the other students you know you’ll leave, because you’re going to make an impact on them. I guarantee it.
I remember walking around campus my first year at Asbury in awe of some of the seniors. They seemed so much older, so much more put together than I was, and I wanted to be as cool and capable as the senior journalists in my department. A few members of the Ransomed Class sat in my section of the balcony in chapel and I even thought of trying to start a conversation in hopes of sparking friendship.
But I was shy and kept my mouth shut, because a senior would never want to be friends with a freshman know-nothing, right?
Wrong.
Underclassmen, do not discount yourself like I did. Upperclassman me would love nothing more than to engage with underclassmen, because we seniors are not all cool and capable and pulled together, no matter how it may appear. We are not all-knowing and definitely still have things to learn. And you have valuable things to teach us, like your overflowing love for Asbury that hasn’t been tainted with years of cynicism yet.
Underclassmen, this reference may be before your time, (so you’ll have to ask an upperclassman what it means) but #bebold and reach out to upperclassmen! We are not all high-and-mighty as it may appear sometimes, and I don’t know a single senior who would turn you away.
Since freshmen rarely have classes with seniors, this may involve a little more legwork to find and get to know someone. This could be asking a professor or advisor to connect you with an upperclassman in your discipline. It could be joining a Bible study you know an upperclassman is leading. It could be asking someone for advice on a project or sharing a lunch hour. You’re going to have to speak up, but it’s going to be worth it.
And upperclassmen, you heard me! Go pour what knowledge you do have into students coming after you, and be ready to experience the joys they can pour back into your life. After all, if a university really is nothing without its students, the ones after us are the ones going to define Asbury.
But what will this practically look like? For one, it means investing in your clubs and organizations. One of the marks of a college campus is the student groups that meet and hold events and speak out passionately for the things they love. However, another parallel mark of these groups is their constant turnover. No one group experiences a great legacy because students start something, lead, rarely effectively train underclassmen to take over and then leave. And the process starts all over again for the next four years.
If you want to make your mark on campus, invest in those students joining your club or sports team or ensemble now, before April arrives, and train them up in the way they should go (if I can borrow some biblical language). Not only will you develop new friendships as you pass on wisdom, but your organization will be stronger for it in the long term.
Investing in other students before graduation isn’t necessarily easy, but I speak from experience when I say some of the best friends I have made at college are the ones I hung out with four months before they walked the stage in that funny cap and gown. It’s not an upperclassman-only issue; it’s an all-campus, time-to-break-class-barrier-lines thing. It’s about keeping Asbury strong, and your heart stronger as you move beyond campus in the years to come.