KAWACHI: No post on Sundays

I recognized this a while ago – probably within my first couple of months here at BU – but I refused to admit it to myself until now.

I have grown into an awful long-distance friend.

Since I moved across the country for school, my friendships with those back home in California are defined, at least for the months that I am at school, by communication through my iPhone and the Internet. Theoretically, this should be easy. I’m on Facebook and I text much more than I care to acknowledge, let alone admit to anyone, including myself.

Yet I still manage to ignore the kind words of my friends.

Okay . . . ignore is a bad choice of words. I’m sure the friends reading this are now angry with me (I’m sorry!); what I mean to say is that I put it off.

I tell myself, “Krissen . . . focus on the work you should be doing! Facebook will be there later!”

Since the beginning of school, my close friends and I have taken to recording videos for each other and posting them on each other’s Facebook walls.  There have been obvious lulls throughout the course of the school year – we have all had our “hell weeks” and midterms and finals about which to worry. After that, however, they have all seemed to make up for lost time, getting right back into the video groove with gusto. Me? Eh. Let’s not talk about that . . .

Sometimes I blame it on the fact that I’m at the library so much. It’s true…I do spend the majority of my free time during the week cozy in a cubicle between Mugar’s numerous stacks of dusty books. I sit there and procrastinate with the best of them, yet still manage to finish my work at the end of the day. (And I really do mean end. . . . It’s a miracle for me to leave before midnight.)

But honestly? I could easily record a video during the day. I just . . . don’t. I don’t really have an excuse or reasonable explanation of why. During the times that I do have the capability of recording even a quick, two-minute greeting . . . I don’t.

What makes me feel infinitely worse is when I check my mail here at Warren Towers. I don’t think I’m able to count the amount of times I’ve been surprised by art postcards and letters from my lovely friends.

I received one about a week or so ago. And my own letter to her in response was the first I had sent all year, I think.

From receiving those postcards and letters from the West Coast, I’ve realized the heartfelt intricacies of snail mail.

There are few things that beat seeing a small envelope with your name and address on it.

Krissen Kawachi is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at k.kawachi@gmail.com.