“TP Day 9
Ever since the start of the course, I’ve experienced emotions of the extreme end every Friday evening. Whether immense frustration, sometimes undirected and unsourced anger, or (only once) great satisfaction, Friday evenings have always been emotionally heavy. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s feeling the fatigue beginning to kick in at this halfway stage, but as things are only going to get more demanding, we’re all going to have to press on together.
One of the toughest things I’ve faced during this course is the lack of friends. All my education life, I’ve had friends to support me through the difficult times, to help me with my homework and understanding of the content, people I could count on both inside and outside the classroom. Apart from the lack of peer-level emotional support, I’ve also had to deal with the lack of peer-level academic support, and personally, it’s been a whole new and unexpected experience. So far, I’m hesitant to say that anyone has actually made proper friends within the course. Of course, everyone’s lovely and helpful to each other in class, and one of the best experiences of this course has been learning with adults. Yet I do find it a shame that we’ve yet to gel beyond the academic scope of the course. I know it’s no one’s fault, and there’s no one to blame, because being adults, everyone has their own families to go home to, their children to take care of, friends from other environments, other jobs or work that they have to attend to, and that definitely affects their relationships in the course. I don’t know whether my age has been a factor in being unable to make friends, or whether my idealistic youth is the source for my hope that everyone would be friends in a warm fuzzy wuzzy world. My heart wants to believe that by the end of the course, perhaps we’d all be closer, my head knows better than that.
Someone once told me that adults rarely form friendships in work, which are of the same depth as those youths form in school. I used to take that with a pinch of salt, but now I’m not quite sure. Another friend also felt that adults can never be true friends with each other because they always have their ‘adult face’ on the whole time, and everyone’s too polite to each other; no one dares to embarrass and make a fool out of themselves. Away from my obvious academic learning, this is arguably the biggest learning curve I’m still trying to climb.”
- 03/02/12
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Nikon F3 | Ektar 100
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, NY
