What colleges have you attended?
I was 18 years old when I went to study at UNICAMP. Looking back at that day, I realize now I was only a child. But there I was, out in the world, living experiences I never dreamed of. One of the greatest challenges for me at that time was moving to another city. It was a fair distance away from my parents. I didn’t know a single person in that new place. For me it was like going to live in another country. It was a little scary, but also a little exciting. In that school I have forged some of the most enduring friendships of my life. A group of eight friends called Amigos921. And this is what this story is about, friendship.
We all have similar ages. Even to this day, we joke among ourselves, trying to figure out who is the oldest. Not to brag or anything, I am the second youngest of them, so that you don’t need to speculate. Of course I also revealed that because it’s in my advantage. We have lived so many good moments, others not so good. It is going to be hard to relate all of them in such a short space. For today I will just tell one of the episodes we participated in.
Hazing was a huge tradition in Brazilian universities. I don’t know how this is now. At our time, it was pretty heavy. The freshmen had their hair cut. Their faces and bodies were painted. Eggs and flour were thrown at them. They were brought to traffic lights to collect money to buy beer for the parties coming after. There were many other things as well. It was an unwritten rule that the teachers wouldn’t show up to the first week of classes. This absence allowed this initiation rite to take place.
However, we were pretty lucky, we were the first cohort in our course. This means we were all freshmen, but there were no sophomore students before us. In the first days of the school year, we all attended the classes with some fear. We were afraid that another course would come and claim ownership of us. Nobody came, though. We saw all other courses hazing their freshmen. Meanwhile, we sat there undisturbed, pretty much alone. We were living the good life by ourselves. We just spent the first days talking and getting to know each other.
A couple of weeks went by like this. We were getting used to spending the time of class just idling. At that particular day, a Friday, we all were eager to go out and maybe drink a beer somewhere. The class hadn’t start yet, and the room was a pandemonium, each one of us was screaming louder than the other. We were looking to see if the professor was coming. His name was Dimitri. We thought that we saw his car in the parking lot, but we weren’t sure. Some of us went out in the corridor. Others were looking at the other rooms. I was assigned to look out of the window. I kept screaming, “He’s not coming, it’s safe for us to go! What are we waiting for? Let’s skip this class, he’s late as hell!”
Then I realized that something was wrong. All of a sudden, the room was silent as a church. I still had my back turned to them while looking out of the window. For a split second I thought they all had abandoned me there. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I will give my class now, if it pleases you.“ It was professor Dimitri! And he heard every single word that I said! I think I never felt more embarrassed in my entire life. But we all had a good laugh afterwards.
Even after 32 years I still keep in contact with Amigos92 almost daily. We live scattered around the globe, in Brazil, Australia, Canada and the US. When we have a chance we try and do a reunion somewhere in the middle. I feel blessed and thankful that I met them during my university years. This friendship I have carried through my entire life.
- Amigo is the word for friend in Portuguese and 1992 is the year where we all embarked on this adventure. ↩︎