Do I have a life?

Q: Sometimes I wonder if I have a life.

I mean, I communicate with my family and friends via email and Facebook, so it's not that I spend hours and hours on the computer every day, but I get on quite often for short amounts of time, so it looks as though I'm on nonstop. Why don't I hang out with friends from high school, you may ask? Well, I have two friends from high school. I hung out with them once this break and we actually ended up sitting in a coffee house (THE coffee house, actually) for nearly 4 hours talking. This was lovely. But they're coffee-house friends, not bedroom friends, or (anymore) school friends, and so I see them during my breaks when we go out for coffee once. I recently shocked a Vassar friend by telling her that, contrary to what I may seem like at Vassar, I don't really have a substantial body of friends at home. Not that I have enemies--basically everyone likes me--I don't really have actual friends aside from these two.

This probably sounds like a sob story, and I guess at one point in my life it would have been. But the reason I'm writing this is to talk about how now I have closer friends at Vassar than I've had my entire life, and I'm so grateful for them. Now that I'm a whole person on my own, they make me even better. For the first time, even guys have been interested in me for more than friendship (like, for real, not the sleazy guys who yell at me from their cars). I love all my friends, and I can't wait to see them again. They make the less-fun parts of life--like class, homework, going to the doctor, and being randomly down about life--so much easier to get through.

A: Yeah, I have a life. I make it because I am a complete, valuable person, and my friends make it for adding to my well-being.

Really, though, I think everything has value--Facebook stalking, video game playing, dozing off, reading, volunteering for child refugees from third-world countries, doing absolutely nothing, making out, writing emails to people, and doing pushups. So what is "having a life"? I don't think it's whether what we're doing with it has value--since everything has value in my opinion--but instead it's whether what we're doing (or not doing) makes us satisfied with ourselves.

I leave early Saturday morning for Vassar, getting in just a few hours after dorms open.

I can't wait.

- aRCHEL