College?

16th August, 2022. The day I entered my college. I was done with my registration, and was just hanging out with my friends. That’s when we started talking about how, until a month ago, we did not even know eachother.

Let us rewind a bit. Once I got my acceptance letter, I started seeing random Instagram accounts popping up… students from my batch had made a batch Instagram account, where we could send in our pictures and write a bit about ourselves to make friends before entering the ‘scary world of higher education’. A while later, a batch WhatsApp group was created and smalled groups started popping up. A girls group, a boys group, groups according to where people lived, a K-pop group, Taylor Swift group, etc. Around July 2022, a random group started going off. There was a Russian number spamming on the group, and around 15 of us came online at the same time, and confronted the person spamming. Later on when that number was removed from the group, the 15 of us made a separate group and laughed about whatever had just happened. Over the next month, I was glued to my phone every chance I could get because I was very scared of feeling left out. I mean, it is a big group, so we are meant to have smaller groups within right? What if some day I dont come online for some time and everyone forgets about me and I’m left alone? Welp. Its okay, I was a kid. Anyway, we made plans of meeting during registeration once we are on campus and talked about everything in the world.

Fast forward to where the story began from. This is the friend group I was sitting with that day. We were talking about the conversation we had had on the group, some ‘weird’ people we had not met yet, how college mught turn out, etc. I had started romanticising my college days at that time. I was so excited to explore a different city with a new set of people, to live away from my family at 18… etc etc. It was very exciting for some reason.

And then, I fought with my brother a few days later. Topic of our conversation? My friends. 2-3 days after my college started, I was on a call with my brother. I told him about the friend group, about how I am so excited to spend the next four years with them, and how everyone is pretty good. My brother’s response? “Haha, the group would not last your entire college life… everyone is optimistic but it wont happen but I am glad you have a good set of people to hangout with for now”. Now ofcourse, I was young and naive and I am the younger sibling, so whatever I say and believe is right, right? So i fully started believing that “oh I know people have issues but this is different, I KNOW this group will last”…. it will last, right?

Haha wrong.

Now we come to the friend group itself. There were around 12-13 of us after the registration day. But only 7-8 of us actually used to hangout as a group. The dynamic was.. very weird. There were two girls in the group… V and A, who were in the same school as me for 11th and 12th grades. We were in the same friend group as well, but I never really liked them that much. Both of them were attention seekers but in different ways. V used to be the kind of girl who would hangout with boys and then say ‘girls are so much drama’, and A used to be the kind of girl who used to intentionally trip on air and say ‘omg Im so stupid haha’…. Im not even kidding they have actually said those things.. multiple times.
College was the perfect time for me to distance myself from them.. and I did. Even though we were in the same group again, I made sure to attach myself with andifferent set of people. V got a boyfriend as soon as she entered college and they broke up 6-7 months into the college starting. Everyone started distancing themselves from V because she used to be mean and rude to people, and then used to act like a victim.

Eventually, the group fell off. Everyone had had enough of how immaturely people were treating eachother and of the highschool like drama the group was stuck in time and again. Only 5 of us were left from the group. I was glad I was a part of this group since everyone seemed nice and also fun loving. We used to go out together, try out good places and restaurants, we used to talk till 2 am as a group, go on walks around the campus, and all of that. Out of the 5 of us, there was one girl, lets call her IM, who was pretty rich. She was the one who used to get the most amount of ‘pocket money’ every month as well. The rest of us got the same amount and were hence not too keen on going out daily even thought IM sometimes suggested so. And then, everything changed in third year. Except for me, everyone was graduating after third year. I was going to stay for the fourth year. Considering that everyone realised we wont be able to hangout after graduation as much, they started asking their parents for more money. Infact, one of them started emotionally blackmailing her father so that he would give her more money. I was the only one who did not want to ask my parents for more money because they had already been spending so much on tuition for me. As a consequence, I used to say no to a lot of plans with the group.

Eventually the group started getting closer, and very obviously I got left behind. Then one day, they started talking about our grad trip.. something that made me realise how little friendship actually mattered to them.

This is where the friendship within the group got scary.

You see, since I started staying with myself a lot more, and stipped hanging out with the group much, I anyway already felt left out. The group wanted to spend a lot more money than I did. According to them, it doesnt matter who comes with them, it just matters that they go wherever they want to, which is completely fair on their part. Something like this happened when we decided to discuss our grad trip. Afterall, 4 out of 5 members of the group wete graduating right? So the discussions began and a lot of suggestions as to where we should go cane forward… Kasauli, Meghalaya, somewhere in Rajasthan maybe? Goa again?

Someone jokingly suggested Thailand in that conversation.. and it was like the other four had an answer ready. They wanted to take an international trip… this was something I wasnt really okay with. Spending close to 50k for a grad trip when we are still on our parents’ money was not okay with me. Some discussions went ahead and I somehow convinced my parents to say yes. Although, I was curious about one question. Will they go ahead with the plans even if I said no, since they have been trying to convince me since such a long time? Surely they wont right since the whole point of having a grad trip is staying with the group… how does it matter where we go as long as we are together as a group?

I went and asked my friend this question. And she very casually said ‘Ofc we will go bro even if you dont come’…. thats when Inwas honestly heartbroken. A lot of fights happened but I still decided to go on the trip. It was decided we will go to Vietnam. When it came to booking the tickets, booking for one day later wouldve saved around 10k for me, and around 4-5k for the others so I called my friends up and asked them to come meet me for the bookings. When we met I told them that the tickets are cheaper for one day later and we should go ahead with that. We are still in college and are going out on our parents money, so ofc we should do everything to save our money right?

Thats when they told me that the four of them had already booked their tickets for the day before. Together. They said it doesnt make sense to lose out on 5-6k for a whole day out there. You see, the money wasnt even the issue here. What hurt me was that the tickets got booked together… and no one decided to call me to book the tickets with the entire group. Another solution was that I could have booked for a day later since I wanted to save the money and even then one of the members said, ‘oh but doesnt make sense for us to waste so much time right, can just one person go and pick her up from the airport when she comes, I want to rest’. And everyone laughed. Thats when I decided I was not going with yhe group.
That is when I left the group.