MIT student blogger Allan K. '17

everything i know about friendship, i learned from the wellesley-mit toons by Allan K. '17

twenty two notes to myself

  1. schedule regular times to see my friends, weekly or biweekly. put it in google calendar. (toons has rehearsal 2x a week)
  2. check in with my friends and ask how they’re doing. do this regularly (toons does this formally, every rehearsal)
  3. take my friends off campus (the bus to wellesley is an easy way to do this but there are other places too!)
  4. invite my friends to do things that i want/need to do and sometimes they will say yes. this applies to concerts. this applies to ordering dominos at 1am. this applies to watching a terrible movie for my film class.
  5. tell my friends where i am when i’m just working somewhere on campus or hanging out by myself in my room. if they’re nearby they’ll swing by and say hi, and it sets a precedent for letting them know that they can visit me.
  6. ask my friends for advice. they are smart people and often know what to do.
  7. introduce my new friends to my old friends. if my friends are friends with me they’ll probably be friends with each other.
  8. make friends with people in other years. and other majors. and other schools.
  9. parties are more fun with friends.
  10. find out my friends’ birthdays and celebrate them. invite my friends and their friends.
  11. pset with my friends. my life is so much better when i’m taking classes that my friends are also taking.
  12. don’t pset with my friends too much. psetting together shouldn’t be our primary interaction with each other.
  13. send my friends things that remind me of them. send my friends memes that remind me of them.
  14. make things together. especially art. especially bad art.
  15. share the things i like with my friends. music. articles. quotes from my reading assignments. video games.
  16. groupchats. or the og groupchats, mit mailing lists.
  17. ways to hang out that aren’t psetting: going out for meals. cooking meals together. guest-passing people into dining halls. taking boxes of food from dining and sharing them. watching a tv series together. being workout/exercise buddies.
  18. do things that signal commitment. see (1), (14), (16), (17).
  19. spontaneously visit my friends when i’m near their rooms. sometimes they won’t be there but that’s ok because sometimes they will. knock on their door and ask if they want to take a walk or go to beantown.
  20. take pictures of/with my friends. save the pictures.
  21. remember those groupchats and mailing lists? messaging out “is anyone awake? wanna talk?” in the middle of an all-nighter gets a surprisingly high response rate. not 100%. but a lot higher than 0%.
  22. be ok with saying no to things sometimes. it’s ok. friends will understand.