A thing I like about grad school (3/23/11):

During periods of high stress, people tend to let down their guard and speak openly about their feelings in contexts where doing so would typically be considered inappropriate.  In the space of a ten-floor elevator ride, during what may be the only conversation you’ve ever had with a person, they will disclose to you things that they would likely conceal from close friends, for fear of worrying them. 

There’s an understanding: school-related stress forces you to confront your intellectual shortcomings, which, in turn, leads you to behave in ways that you otherwise would not.  I’m willing to bet that, like me, most of my peers’ self-images are all tied up in their feelings about, and others’ reflections of, their intellectual abilities.  Brushing up against the limits of those abilities can be both frustrating and frightening.  I just spoke to a near-total stranger about how I threw a chair at my wall while preparing a report, and he told me that he punched his monitor so hard that he cracked the lens of his webcam.  We reassured each other that these were reasonable responses to writers’ block.  Without intending to, we enter into a tight, if not enduring, community of mutual support.

This phenomenon also, I think, accounts for the emotional intensity of many of the relationships that I formed back when I was organizing, as well as the rapidity with which they disintegrated in my post-organizing days; They were not founded on shared interests, or even mutual admiration, but on a common struggle.  We were talking through problems, rather than to each other.  Once I ceased to be an active participant in that struggle, the basis for many of my closest relationships dissolved.  I can’t tell whether this makes me miss certain people and times more or less.