In my first year of college, I was involved in different groups and organizations, but my closest friends were five women that lived in my dorm. We were all first year students that bonded quickly and strongly - so much in fact, that I did not experience any homesickness in my first year away. We all decided to move as a group into a dorm together for our sophomore year.
During my sophomore year I noticed that one of my friends was having problems, was withdrawing socially and was partaking in some self-destructive behavior. In retrospect, I should have spoken to my SA (student advisor), HP (hall president), res life director, dean, or someone at the health center – anyone in an “authority” position that could help. Instead, my other concerned friends and I gathered together to talk about her problems. I knew some things about this friend that my other friends did not know and I disclosed them, thinking I was doing the right thing. Suffice it to say that my friends went and talked to her when I wasn’t around, told her everything I had said, and everything blew up in my face. This was a rough lesson in my development of interpersonal competence (vector one) “knowing when and how to communicate what to whom” (Chickering & Reisser, 1993, p. 75).
While I admittedly had done something very wrong, my friends treated me poorly through the whole ordeal. I was ashamed that I could hurt someone I cared about so deeply that I accepted my friends’ behavior towards me thinking that I deserved to be treated that way and saw myself as a “bad friend.” Instead of realizing I was a good person that had behaved badly, I saw myself as a bad person which Peterson, Schwartz, and Seligman (1981 as cited in Chickering & Reisser, 1993) noted as related to symptoms of depression. While I continued to go to class and stay involved in extracurricular activities, I was far less social and felt several negative emotions related to depression (sadness, worthlessness and an expectation of punishment) and a few physical problems as well (loss of appetite and lethargy).
With time, I became aware of both my feelings and my faulty logic. Having read somewhere that exercise increases endorphins, I started going to the gym. I also realized that I had other friends outside this close-knit circle of friends that cared about me and began to spend increasing amounts of time with them. Without the obligations I’d had to my “clique,” I spent more time on my studies, formed study groups with classmates and spent more time practicing my violin. This amalgam of experiences helped me improve my intellectual, physical and manual competence (vector one) and was also a lesson in managing my emotions (vector two) of depression and guilt.
It wasn’t until more time had passed that I realized the “clique” of friends I was part of wasn’t a healthy relationship. In my college experience up until that point, I had managed to move from dependence to autonomy from my parents (vector three), but instead of moving towards interdependence, I instead became dependent (codependent?) on this group of friends. They became my family and we clung to each other in a needy way. Some of my friends hadn’t developed friendships outside the group, and several of them not only planned their schedules around each other, but also registered for the same classes. Reading this passage from Chickering and Reisser’s fourth vector reminded me of this experience:
“Schedules are arranged to permit maximum closeness. Other friends fade into the background. Sometimes classes and homework go by the wayside. Students may also fuse with a group, spend all their time hanging out together, and even take on characteristics of the group, forgetting that they exist as separate beings.” (p. 162)
It was in my break from this group that I was able to truly move from dependence to autonomy, (the first step in vector three) and begin my journey of developing healthy intimate friendships (vector four).
While I knew there was nothing I could do to reverse my past wrongdoings, I knew I could control my future actions. Half way through my sophomore year, the girl who was my first-year roommate (and very close friend) returned to campus after a semester away. We were lucky – there was an open room that we could both move into. While the room was in the same dorm as my former “clique” I was at least on a different floor. I didn’t fill her in on what had happened with our friends, just that I was spending more of my time on my studies and on extracurricular activities. I decided that instead of trying to cling tightly to her friendship and fill her head with negative stories and speak ill of my former friends (who were still her friends), I would just let things be. For me, I think this marked the beginning of establishing my own value system and it was definitely the first situation where I made a conscious effort to uphold a value that I had established for myself. I see this as related to Chickering & Reisser’s seventh vector, developing integrity, where I was moving away from acting in my own self-interests towards more socially aware and responsible behavior.
While this experience was painful to deal with, I experienced more growth from it than had it not happened. It helped me become a better, more honest, and trustworthy friend, and helped me define and uphold my ideals of friendship. By my senior year, I had many good friends and acquaintances, as well as a handful of very close friends. We did not feel the need to live on the same floor (or even in the same dorm) and were involved in our own things – different extracurricular activities, work, and different academic studies. Instead of living, sleeping, eating, breathing and spending every waking hour possible together, we all did our own thing but made time for and shared our lives with each other. In the context of my undergraduate college experience, I was able to move to an interdependent relationship with my friends (vector three) and was able to balance my time among myself, my friends, and my romantic relationship (vector four).
To end this exercise, I want to emphasize that the development continues. Just because one touches on several of Chickering and Reisser’s vectors in college doesn’t mean they have developed “competence” in all those vectors in all aspects of life. For example, being able to manage one type of emotion does not necessary mean one can manage all emotions, and just because one is able to develop healthy intimate friendships doesn’t mean one is able to develop healthy intimate romantic relationships. I chose to share this experience because while it was only one of many experiences I had in college (I haven’t even talked about identity yet!), but it provided me the broadest context on which to view my development from the vector perspective.
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