The plastics sit together at lunch. (Movie Gazette)

They say friends are everything during the rollercoaster adolescent years. That’s why teenage relationships are one of sociologists’ favorite phenomena to study. Penn associate professor of sociology Grace Kao, who was featured in the March 15 issue of Penn Current, chose to study this age group in her latest work on friendship, entitled “Do You Like Me as Much as I Like You? Friendship Reciprocity and Its Effects on School Outcomes among Adolescents.”

Hoping for some profound insights into the nature of friendship, I was disappointed to find that the study primarily focused on friendship trends along race lines and how these trends reflected on the kids’ grades. Just like every other work on the sociology of friendship, Kao’s study played the race card. Not that race is irrelevant — everyone knows that race has everything to do with our relationships. But that’s the point. We already know that all the black kids sit together at the lunch table, all the Asian kids sit together, etc.

What’s more interesting about Kao’s study is how she defines friendship. She specifically uses the term “reciprocal friendship,” defined as a mutual agreement between two children that they are indeed friends. In other words, friendship can only be determined by a personal evaluation on the part of the subject. Now, I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I had a new best friend every week. My friendships were about as stable as Webmail.

And in college, it seems that the title of “friend” becomes even more tenuous and arbitrary. There are the mere acquaintances, with whom you cross paths occasionally, be it one wild night, one semester, or even a couple of years. Fellow classmates, floormates, co-workers, and organization members usually fall into this category.

Then there are the old high school friendships, separated by distance and maintained by regular Facebook messages that go something like, “I miss you!!! <3 <3 <3.” You’re reluctant to let go of these friends, but honestly, you’ve grown apart. And you can continue on down the spectrum until you get to the lifelong friends, the “bosom friends,” if you will — those precious few who will make up your wedding party, become the godparents of your children, and perhaps attend your funeral.

Friendships, sometimes unlike friends themselves, come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. As such, the term “friendship” is utterly subjective.

I guess there are some things that the sociology professors just can’t teach us. But you know what they say — most of the lessons learned in college are taught outside of the classroom.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.