Guest Post: Friendship Through My Eyes

To celebrate our extension of Friendship Fortnight, new 2018 student Kharanshu has written a reflective piece about the many facets of friendship, and the importance of cherishing old friends and making new ones. He’s really looking forward to making new friends in a few short weeks on our Spring program! In today’s social media driven world, one can control or perform almost any thinkable task at the click of a button. Making friends is also looked upon as a big task, if one is active on any social networking site. You just need to add friends at the click of a button, and keep them updated with your latest tweets or pictures. As the number of virtual friends and followers tends to increase with each passing day, have you ever wondered how many of them will stand by you in the days to come? So what does friendship actually mean? To me, friendship is an understanding that helps friends evolve. True friends are the ones who understand you and various aspects of your life. They are the ones who take time to talk to you if you need to be corrected, without embarrassing you in public. They encourage you to be confident of yourself, respect you and your views. Friends tend to show patience and lend their ears. Something is wrong if your friends agree with you all the time. Another important part of friendship is how to keep them? Friendship is about cherishing memories, even if some barriers break the contact between friends. I believe that friendship is not a deal or a give-and-take business. Today, many people may have forgotten the friends they made in their childhood. You make friends at school, and forget them when you part ways or start your university life. Reflecting on a quote by the author Charles Caleb Colton, “Friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.” This doesn’t mean that one should not make new friends. One should do so, but must also let old friendships grow.   Having shared my thoughts on the qualities of good friends and keeping friendships, let me tell you more about how one can start making friends. Well, friendship is one mind and two bodies. When I try to make friends, I look for someone who has a thought process similar to me and likes what I like. This helps in making friendships last longer. Someone rightly said that if your absence does not affect your friend’s life, then your presence has no meaning in his/her life. So as I pack my bags for my educational sojourn to Cambridge as a student of the ‘Computer Science and Mathematics’ Spring program, I will do everything to make lasting friendships, to keep in touch even after we have parted ways. I believe that friendship in the unique Reach Cambridge environment will result in a lot of teaching and self- development. I cannot wait to learn how we connect even though we have come from countries that are far apart! How to live together in University settings? It will open my mind to new cultures, good habits, clear myths and misunderstandings. And, of course, I will learn to have fun in ways I would never have imagined! Kharanshu, Computer Science & Maths, Spring 2018