Blog Post #8: Intellectual Friendships

Amity Tran

HON 101

Schultz

20 October 2016

Blog Post #8: Intellectual Friendships

The torture of school has allowed me to build many intellectual friendships that grew into personal friendships. For some reason, the hatred of school just brings everybody together, which is why intellectual friendships are the easiest to build. The stresses of school do not discriminate. School is a monster that terrorizes everybody. It lives under everyone’s beds and in everyone’s closets. School is terrible, but the friendships that have begun in it are not.

One of my most memorable intellectual friendships is one that I made this year. It started on the second week of my CHEM 161 lab class. It was the day I had been dreading; the TA told everybody to choose lab partners. This made me a little anxious because I had no friends in that class, and as I heard the excited whispers of people agreeing to be lab partners, my anxiousness heightened. My options were dwindling and no one was approaching me. Was I unapproachable? Do I look scary? It took every ounce of courage in my body to tap the shoulder in front of me. The owner of the shoulder turned around. With fake confidence, I asked,”Do you have a lab partner?”. She replied,”No. I don’t.” Trying to hold in my sigh of relief, I said, “Do you want to be lab partners?”. Thank God for me, she replied,”Okay!”.

After a couple weeks of strictly being lab partners, we started learning more about each other by talking about our families, our future plans and most importantly, how much we are struggling in school. Also, it turns out that we are not only classmates in lab class, but also math class. She has been my saviour in both classes. Any time I do not know how to do something, I just send her a text and she will help me. She honestly knows how to do everything. It is truly amazing. Other than being one of the smartest and most helpful people I know, she has a great personality. She always finds a way to make any situation joyful, and she is also very kind. I am glad that I tapped that stranger’s shoulder in lab class on the second week of school.