Category Three Friends

Finding community in unfamiliar homes

This article is part of the Claritas spring 2024 issue, Home.

By: se lee

Living only thirty-three miles away from my high school made telling people I went to boarding school hard to justify. But explaining the boarding house I lived in was even harder. We were a handful of classical musicians, internationally selected to study at a very elite program in a very normal private school, living in a boarding house off-campus. The only real parental supervision? A middle school teacher and his wife named Art and Andrea who had been elected to watch over the house. 

It may have only been thirty-three miles away from my parents, but it was a completely different way of life than living at home.

Each day, I’d wake up at 4:45 a.m. and hop in the shower by 5. By the time I emerged from the steamy bathroom, my housemate, Amy, would also be awake and downstairs. The melodious tones of her violin were masked by the soundproof padding of the practice room, but still, it whispered through the house like the sweetest alarm. By 6 a.m. the boarding house would come to life, the shower running once again as my housemate across the hall, Scarlett, monopolized the bathroom. I could hear the house dog Cyd’s small paws scratching at his parents’ door to be let out. At 7 a.m., I’d chat in the kitchen with Scarlett and Amy, where we’d sip mugs of hot coffee as the boys got ready for the day. 

At the end of the day, around 7 p.m., we would gather at the large wooden dining table that fit our snug family of eight. By 9 p.m., my housemates and I were left to our own devices, which usually involved homework. We took some of the same music theory and math classes, so we all piled into one person’s room for the night, studying or watching movies. Endless laughter would drift through the door and up the stairs.

But on the hard days—when some of us failed while others aced a test we had all studied for together, or someone got called out in orchestra for not practicing, or inter-house relationships went wrong—the house went quiet. Except for Cyd and his little nails trotting across the tile floor. Our usual after school affairs were pared down to a quick snack before someone inevitably said, “Okay, I’m going to my room to do work.” Dinner ended shortly after it started and we dispersed to our own rooms. Amy would stay in the practice rooms on days like these, her fingers flying across her violin as she drowned out the outside world with her music. Sometimes Scarlett would knock on my door and lie in bed with me, both of us silent and staring at the ceiling, neither of us wanting to admit that on these bad days, the glue that held our house together was not as sticky as we always believed it to be. 

But despite the disputes, embarrassing moments, and biting glares, we ultimately made the house a home. Sometimes, Art and Andrea would take us to Marie Callender’s the next day, and we’d each pick our own pie to bring home for a giant pie fest. Other times, it would start with someone watching a movie in the family room, someone else joining until we were all cozily piled onto the cream-colored couch. We lived together in the chaos of life but also in its moments of loneliness. It wasn’t until the fall of my senior year in high school that I realized, somewhere in the years of living there, I had come to refer to the house as home. I finally understood that all of the broken pieces of our family still came together to form our own little community–our own little home. 

When I first came to Cornell, I was nervous about finding a home like the one my boarding school provided me. People often refer to college as a “home away from home,” but I had already found one. My anxiety was further fueled by the isolating COVID-19 policies that Cornell had set in place. I had gone from living in a vibrant boarding house surrounded by all of my friends to a single in Dickson, not knowing anyone and having no real way to connect with others.

Attending college during the peak of the pandemic only further distanced my ideal hope for a “home away from home.” When I finally made friends, I was still separated from them, as they lived in Court-Kay-Bauer with their suitemates. I was envious that they had companions to live with while I was randomly assigned to a single room in another dorm. But as spring semester rolled around, I came to realize that these pods were not as perfect as I had romanticized them to be. 

The roommate questionnaire, reduced to simple comparisons of routines, failed to address friendship compatibility such as shared interests and hobbies. Nearly all of my friends ended up hating their roommates by freshman spring because they were not alike in any way other than the times that they went to bed and woke up. And by the end of freshman year, we were all sad to realize that our friendship had come to fruition too late in the semester for us to plan to live together in the coming fall. Still, at that late point in the semester, I found comfort knowing that even though we wouldn’t be able to share the same dorm, I had found a community of friends that I could call a “home.” 

The rapid evolution of my longing for human connection during the pandemic to my gaining of a core friend group baffled me. I was surprised by how closely we had grown in only nine months. 

Just recently, I learned about Aristotle’s distinctions of friendships into three categories: utility-based, pleasure-based, and character-based. [1] The first category is built on necessity—a class acquaintance we only text regarding homework and prelims. The second is built on the pleasure that is derived from hanging out with someone—the funny person in the friend group who is always making others laugh or the person who always hosts in their cozy dorm room. The third is built on affinity–a friend who shares the same values and beliefs as us, supporting but not fearing to call us out when we do something wrong.

While it is easy to say that any of us have a lot of friends in the third category, it is actually the category that is composed of the smallest, most intimate circle of friends. [2] Aristotle emphasizes that these are the people that we usually spend the most time with in a close, intimate setting, stating, “Men cannot know each other until they have consumed salt together.” In communing with people that we love, we can find a shared happiness. 

In her Daily Sun opinion article “Friendships of Proximity,” Vanessa Olguín ’ 22 highlights the crux of third-tier level friendships, stating, “I found another level of vibing with someone so hard that you just can’t stop laughing when you’re around them.” [3] She goes on to suggest that these relationships are significant because taking part in them shapes who we are. 

Looking back now, I realize that in the small niche of North Campus, I had found the beginnings of my little circle of Category Three™ friends. We went from eating in the dining hall every day to enjoying the most mundane aspects of life together like grocery shopping on Sundays or paying utility bills. These friends aren’t the ones that I text in the middle of the night grumbling about wet laundry as I run the dryer for the third cycle (apparently two times wasn’t enough) because they are right next to me in the laundry room of the rundown apartment on College Ave that we share. Somewhere between the late night runs to Louie’s and the bonfires at Fall Creek Gorge during freshman year, we seamlessly fell into a groove and ran with it.

Of course, these third-tier friendships can be found in places besides college. The Christian community consists of relationships built on the common beliefs and values of Jesus. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul the Apostle writes, “I want to know Christ–yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” [4] The shared faith in knowing Christ’s power allows us to readily rely on each other during hardships. 

These staunch relationships quickly extend beyond weekly Bible study meetings to become relationships that bring peace and comfort in all aspects of my life. My friends will text me verses that speak to my current situation at exactly the right time. 

Matthew 9 describes Jesus sitting down with tax collectors and Pharisees to break bread and share a meal. The discourse between the despised tax collectors (accused of being greedy) and the hypocritical Pharisees (religious leaders that did not believe Jesus was the Messiah) comes to a head as Jesus brings peace between them by stating that they are all sinners in need of repentance and forgiveness. [5] 

Much like the cream-colored couch in my former boarding house that pieced my friendships back together in times of hardship one roommate at a time, Jesus is the string between us, tying us together with His love and salvation.

To be in a community that we can call “home” takes work. There will be good days and bad ones, but it is up to us to lean into that fire and embrace the all-encompassing nature of friendship. Proverbs 27 states, “Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens the other.” [6] Whether it is, through experiencing hardships together or sharing in the little joys of life, we need others to help us grow. It is necessary for us to surround ourselves with people who not only bring out our best selves but who are also not afraid to nudge us past the boundary of comfort in order to inspire growth. In these people—in these communities—we can find a home.

Sources

[1] Katz, Emily. “Aristotle on friendship.” The Conversation.

[2] Rackham, H. “Aristotle in 23 Volumes.” Vol. 19. Harvard University Press.

[3] Olguín, Vanessa. “Friendships of Proximity.” Cornell Daily Sun.

[4] Philippians 3:10 (NIV)

[5] Matthew 9:10-17 (NIV)

[6] Proverbs 27:17 (NIV)