A "Friend" From College

We spend a variation of four years of our lives in a place surrounded by several different kinds of people, most around the same age. This we call college. We find different ways to make friends by having roommates, trying new classes, joining clubs, a brief whirlwind time in a sorority in my case. Nonetheless we surround ourselves with similar and familiar people for years. Whether you are close to them or friends by association, you are still bonded, by the same degree, classes, stress, and the combination of thriving and surviving.

When I was in college my major was in hospitality, thus I ran into and became friends and friends of friends with people who also loved events and had a more than not an outgoing personality. Like previously mentioned, I joined a sorority for a brief month before realizing it was not for me. I didn't click with a lot of the people there, but it did bond me with a few girls who were in my major and their friends they were friends with. We occasionally went out to karaoke or had house birthday drinking parties, but mostly just casually held conversations within our hospitality school building.

I have been out of college going on three years and keeping up with people more than following them on Instagram and occasionally trolling their life through pictures. I haven't talked or kept up with nearly any of them. One had a baby out of the blue, another I knew moved to Texas with the company she got a job with out of college, and the other two or three are dating, being engaged. Thus usual affairs of being in your 20's. All of them except maybe one, is still in the hospitality field from events, to restaurants to hotels, this group of friends covered the industry.

Yesterday, as I was covering for front desk from my normal sales job, my eyes locked with one of the people coming down from the elevator and we clicked instantaneous with both of our eyes. We knew each other. Granted she was one of the friends of a friend category, nonetheless, I haven't talked to her since she graduated. My first internal reaction was "Oh my, I know you, how are you, what a small world kind of deal". My second reaction and response following the hug was "Oh I have to tell her, I am covering for desk, that this isn't my job". Basically justifying why I am at the desk. Post college she has ran with her dream company and I am over here working front desk. In Hospitality that is a career of someone still in college and I had to make sure she knows that this isn't my full time job.

I am typically pretty hard on myself, especially when it come to where I think I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing at this point in my life. She graduated with the same degree as me just a year older and look where she is. Comparison is such a sneaky way to demean your life story. Thinking more about it, I know she gets it, that in hotels you do what you have to do. I mean I go home to my college best friend roommate who graduated the same degree as me with less experience and got in a MIT program that has lead her to where she is today. I still find myself somedays comparing the gap in salary between her and me and it kills me a little. With that being said, I would not want here job at all or the responsibilities that come with it. But still I get in my head and think I could be doing more, I could be higher, better, being paid more. In a position where I travel to hotels and get paid for it kind of gigs. On the other hand, I am wanting to drop everything and not work at all and travel across the country in a van and explore my own back yard of the US.

The job I took here in Colorado was the entry level position to the potential job that I thought would get me to where my 10 year goal was. I am not even sure that I want to do that anymore, let alone stay in the hospitality industry. So why did I feel the need to justify my success to someone I went to school with?

I want to be viewed as successful as most people I believe do, but the last year has really taught me there is more success in life other that the career bound goal job I find myself falling out of love with. Obviously between me handing her a water and checking her out, there wasn't much time for small talk more than I moved here a few months ago and I work in Sales. But I could have told her I moved here a few months a go, I have found a home in living here with my college best friend, I am dating and experiencing this new place. I could have said I have started my own business and do videography, I could have told her I am in love with the growth I am making. But at the end of the day, I went to school with her, we never talked about life expectancy and I doubt her seeing me didn't stay in her thoughts past her leaving the hotel. Because it doesn't matter. We were merely classmates at one time, merely a friend through another friend, merely someone who had the same major as me. So why did I feel the need to justify where I am in life to someone who is just that "a friend form college"?