As I write this, it is Sunday and pouring, and I am wearing several woolly layers indoors. I thought the cold would be miserable, but having just spent several hours in a homey café slouched over hot coffee, things are looking up.

Wandering off campus for me a bit of a rarity. The physical exertion of either taking the Marguerite or biking is somewhat frightening, and my life is so full of inertia that I mostly end up lolling on my bed and falling asleep. Some weeks ago, however, a lovely girl from my house offered to take me out to coffee, on one of my first friend-dates of the quarter.

I interject to explain my friend-dates. In response to a lack of romantic dating at Stanford, I began taking my friends and even acquaintances out on long afternoon dates. In what began as a bit of a joke, we played up the flowers, the dressing up, and sometimes, with a bit of punch and farce, antiquated sexist language.

While those were the days when I still had a mental capacity of a twelve-year-old boy (I am up to thirteen now–it’s encouraging), I learned quite a bit from the process of my friend-dates. Primarily, I discovered how precious these one-on-one conversations were. Certainly, I have enjoyed myself in big groups, from massive freshman year Guitar Hero rock-out sessions to watching movies about killer leprechauns after frat-parties. The exchange of ideas and anecdotes between two people, however, offers a rare secrecy, and establishes a whole different kind of human connection.

So today, this rainy Sunday, I was out on a lovely friend-date in downtown Paly with an esteemable girl named Susannah, wearing stripey green legwarmers and two enormous sweaters. We sipped our milky coffees and began talking about our lives before we had met, and in between two mouth-shovels of carrot cake, I said suddenly, “It’s weird.”

“What?” asked my aforementioned esteemed company.

“It’s weird,” I repeated, staring intensely into my carrot cake. “I started out at Stanford really neurotic.”

Had this been a speed-date, she would have fled for the hills. Susannah, however, is esteemable for a reason. She listened intently as I recounted how, in wanting to turn over a new leaf, I began at Stanford trying to be as neat as possible. Neatness, however, twisted quickly into an unhealthy addiction, wherein my coat hangers began facing the same direction, my sleep hours commenced promptly at midnight, and my underwear–color coordinated and stacked–was folded in a certain way. The act of organisation overtook the substance of what I was organising–in other words, my life. I studied on particular days, partied on others. I ate my salads before my main course, I drank water only at the end of every meal. In sum, my life fell into a predictable routine, became overly compartmentalised, and remained, for far too long, too inflexible for my liking.

It was only through our conversation that I realised how relaxed three years at Stanford have made me, and how much life is better for it. For one, co-op life has greatly augmented my tolerance for germs, dirt and general mess. I have also become friends with some of the wildest, most ridiculous people, a process which hatched me from my rigid shell. Now, I can now sleep anytime between ten and three in the morning depending on which social group I am with, and even the unshowered can slather themselves all over my bed when they visit.

I have not made a 180° turnaround; I am still a little too classy for Porta Potties. But I realised, in the verbal articulation of my habits, how much I have changed, even in the smallest of ways.

My two hours in a little café did not only enable me to learn about a brand new and beautiful person, it also crystallised for me the trajectory of my personal growth. It is curious how reality solidifies once it is expressed aloud. Hearing my own voice acknowledge my previous faults, my dissatisfaction with certain aspects of my life, and my bid to change things made me aware of the effort I had put into the process. Revealing this to some other person also made me feel like I had changed the dynamic between us. Some metaphorical door had been madly thrown open as we made discoveries about one another’s personalities. And it is somehow comforting to think that it isn’t just a one-way discovery, where we excavate little pieces of one another’s lives. Rather, together, through conversation, we are both pioneering new ground, and both being surprised about one another and ourselves.

Friend-date? Email Sam at [email protected]