The Best Parts of Life Can't Be Scheduled
What my college reunion reminded me about friendship, time, and what matters in life
Friends:
Last weekend was my 25th college reunion.
First of all . . . twenty five years? I’ve now been out of college longer than I had been alive when I graduated from college. This makes me feel extremely old.
But also: what a wonderful experience to be back on campus, surrounded by classmates and friends. Our 20th reunion was canceled because of covid, so last weekend was the first time many of had seen each other in a decade. I’m not sure if it was our age, or our stage of life, or the amount of time that had passed since our last reunion, but this reunion felt different from the ones I’ve gone to before. (And I’ve gone to all of them!) Conversations were deeper. Hugs were longer. Tears were much more common.
Everywhere I turned, there was so much laughter — and so much love.
To me, being back on campus, surrounded by familiar faces, was a reminder of what I treasured the most about college — which is to say, the relationships I forged and memories that I made there. And those relationships and memories came from something that feels painfully precious and scarce as we hurtle through middle age: time.
We had so much time. Sure, we were going to classes and studying, but unlike now, we didn’t have children, or full-time jobs, or mortgages — or, for that matter, phones. When I was a student in the late 1990s, there were no social media apps telling us about things we were missing out on, or text message chains to respond to. We barely even had laptops!
Instead, we had opportunities, every single day, to spend extended, unstructured, undistracted time together. We had time to discuss, and explore, and play. We had the chance to have experiences and make memories, and, in so doing, to learn about each other and discover more about ourselves.
I know that college is supposed to be about academics, but my most treasured memories were formed in these unhurried, often spontaneous, moments of presence and connection. They happened over meals in the dining hall, frisbee games in the courtyard, late night conversations in our rooms. Those moments seeded the relationships and created the memories that still feel precious, even after all these years.
And that’s why talking with some current undergraduates and hearing about their habits got me so upset.
The Horror of “G-Cal”-ing
During our reunion weekend, there was an open house at a center, recently opened, that was designed to support student mental health. It made me sad to think that the state of student mental health is so bad these days that such a center would even be necessary, but as someone who is curious about such things, I decided to check it out.
Tucked away on the second floor of the largest dining hall on campus, the center was essentially a series of nicely appointed rooms with beanbags, comfortable chairs, plants (mostly fake!) and tables, with large windows looking out onto greenery and mini chalkboards decorated with the type of aphorisms commonly found in yoga studios.
Two young women sat at the entrance, greeting visitors.
My first question was what people actually did in this space, which was quite hidden — you’d never find it if you didn’t know it was there.
“I think it was originally created as a place for people to socialize,” said one of the undergraduates, with a friendly smile. “But now people use it more as a nice, quiet place to bring their laptops and get some work done.”
I hated the idea that a space meant for socialization had been turned into yet another place for people to be alone together, staring at screens.
But what happened next upset me even more. A friend of mine who’d joined me for my campus wanderings asked the second undergraduate where they did socialize, if it wasn’t here. Did undergraduates still hang out in the dining halls with their friends?
Her response? Sure, she and her friends still had “lunch dates” (note: that is not the same as spontaneous hangouts!) . . . but they often had to “‘G-cal’ them.”
“Wait, what is ‘G-cal’-ing?” I asked.
She laughed empathetically at the old person standing before her. “It’s short for Google calendar-ing,” she said. “We have to G-cal because we’re super busy!”
I’m sorry, but what?
Today’s college students are so busy that they need to “G-cal” their LUNCH DATES?
When I told this story to one of my other friends, he looked horrified and then we joked about what our own college G-cal schedules might have looked like.
The Best Parts of Life Can’t Be ‘G-cal’-ed.
I know that my fake calendar entry might look like a pretty frivolous use of a Wednesday, but I would argue that, given how many of those hours were spent in the company of other people, it wasn’t frivolous at all.
I say that because as many of us probably intuitively know (and as research has shown) relationships are what give our lives meaning and bring us the most joy. On their deathbeds, one of the most common regrets people voice isn’t that they didn’t work harder, or achieve more, or pack more appointments into their digital planners. It’s that they didn’t keep in touch with their friends.
Interestingly, it’s not just having close relationships that’s important. Having acquaintances is, too. These “weak ties” contribute to what researchers call “relationship diversity” (which also contributes to our happiness and satisfaction)—and they were much easier to develop when we were college students, because we were constantly running into one another and sharing the same spaces. The result of all of those micro interactions was a rich feeling of community based on a tapestry of relationships of different depths. I believe that explains why I had so many moments during my reunion when I recognized someone and wanted to give them a hug, even if we hadn’t been close friends. We’d all been part of the same web.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, a reflection from Laurie Santos made it sound like today’s students might not be developing the same web. “As a professor,” she said, “whenever I go into the dining hall, I’m shocked at how few of my students are talking to one another. When I walk into a seminar, where all my students are sitting around a table, they’re not chatting with one another. They’re all on a screen.”
The Challenge
The challenge, of course, is that relationships (with both close and friends and acquaintances) can only be created — and sustained — if we give other people our attention and time.
But unlike college, adult life is not set up for this. Not only do many of us live far away from each other, but in many cases — especially in midlife — we truly are busy (our G-cals are full!). Unlike college, adult life does not offer many opportunities for casual, spontaneous interactions, let alone playful moments or unhurried deeper conversations and connections. It made me want to grab the undergraduate by her shoulder and yell, “The rest of your life will be controlled by your Google calendar! GO HANG OUT WITH YOUR F-ING FRIENDS!”
But that would have been weird. So instead, I cried on the inside and resolved to write a Substack post about it.
“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”
—Robert Waldinger, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life
So what do we DO?
Honestly, I don’t know. The question of how to create and maintain community as an adult—and to create more playful moments—literally keeps me up at night.
But I do know this: it’s not going to happen if we don’t make time and space for our relationships. And we will never be part of a web if we spend all of our free time alone.
It’s why I do my best to stay in touch with friends, to organize events, to make time for spontaneity, to carve out time for hobbies, and to create boundaries with my phone.
But I’m far from perfect, and I’m still hungry for more. So I want to ask you: does any of this resonate? If so, what’s something that you do that helps you prioritize human connection and create more opportunities for more spontaneous connection and fun? And what’s something you could do right now to connect with someone you care about?
I hope you’ll share your ideas and experiences in the comments so that we can learn from each other and, in so doing, perhaps feel a little less alone.
To scrolling less, living more, and creating time and space,
PS: As further evidence that human interactions truly are something we need to prioritize and protect, this is a screen shot of what my internet browser spat out when I tried to spell check the word “empathetically.” (Substack insists that I’m spelling it incorrectly.) I thought it was going to direct me to a dictionary, but instead my computer’s first response was to invite me to confide in it emotionally.
Great post, Catherine. I too find it depressing that the 'mental health space' was even needed and has now been colonised by the screen-gazers. There's a similar café in the university area near me and whenever I've looked in I've seen the same. As for interaction, I've discovered that I'm quite good at thinking up 'little escapades' with a slightly risky element and these are often of interest to other people. For instance, walking through the night to Stonehenge for Solstice sunrise. No we don't know the way, no we don't really know how long it'll take and we're not sure what we're going to do the next day (where to rest, there are a lot of restrictions and police around, you can't just camp anywhere.) That might be counterintuitive to someone thinking 'I must think of something easy to invite people to, like a coffee.' Think of something difficult and a bit nuts is my suggestion.
Great article - my children are age 7 and 9 but I can see how uni/college is already going this way. Thanks to online lectures no one needs to go to campus at all now and I find that really sad.
The AI asking if you need to talk to it was hilarious and shocking!!