Intellectual Friendship

Hunter Garrett
Post #8
Intellectual Friendship

        I had a friend in high school who I originally met in the tenth grade.  We had a very intellectual friendship that existed purely in school.  He was in my English and IET core class at the time, and we later shared the same science, social studies, English, and engineering classes as the years progressed.   He also chose a major that was similar to mine and we were both in the field of engineering.  I found out that we both had very similar interests in many things ranging from science, technology, engineering, video games, guns, planes, history, and astronomy.  This allowed us to connect to each other as two very similar people.  We both even liked to learn about weird and unexplained things in the world that nobody else would ever know about whether it was scientific, paranormal, disturbing, or just random facts.  He had a broad array of knowledge that made it seem like he knew almost everything, and this array of knowledge included the things that nobody even knows about.  This is very similar to my array of knowledge as it is also quite extensive in areas that nobody ever wants to learn about.  We also both liked to learn more about our intellectual interests in our free time, and outside of class we frequently and regularly discussed new and interesting knowledge that we either already knew about or recently discovered.  We were also both immensely detail orientated with a similar work ethic, and we really benefited from this friendship to get through certain classes successfully.
        I was always in the same group as him in our engineering and science classes, and was also his partner for plenty of assignments.  This allowed us to collaborate frequently, exchange ideas, and help each other out on our difficult work.  We always collaborated extremely well together, and his methodical and creative thinking style combined with my own methodical and analytical thinking really well.  When we got a project, he was always the creative one who designed, while I was the one who helped him to construct it or confirm if it would work or not after extensive thought and examination.  We never did argue about anything and this worked out really well in all of our classes to help each other to succeed and pass.  Whenever we were stuck on a difficult assignment or problem, we were always available to help each other out.  Our intellectual friendship was great because we mainly focused on school related work or issues.  This definitely made school easier than it would have been.  It helped to know someone with a similar intellect to mine who I could talk to about serious school related stuff.  We did occasionally go a bit into our personal lives outside of school when we weren't busy; but we mainly focused on the work in class, and discussed other various intellectual matters outside of class.
        Despite our various similarities though, we were also quite different given how he was extremely precise, creative, witty, and humorous.  I was nowhere near as creative or witty as him, and couldn't even compete with him in the many things that he did.  However, this was still very beneficial since I learned a lot from him and his strengths, and he made me realize how I could develop my own creativity and improve my thinking, precision, and mental visualization.  In fact, we actually both learned a lot from each other and our interesting discussions of exchanging knowledge on various and random things.  Intellectual friendships seem highly beneficial because they are very practical and useful especially in school.  It allows you to talk about intellectual and school related matters that other friends wouldn't be able to understand.  Our intellectual friendship seemed very simple, but it was very strong given our similar interests.  Our thinking styles were similar, but not exactly the same.  However, despite my more analytical and literal style and his creative style, both of our methods of thinking surprisingly merged together perfectly.