In times of COVID, it feels difficult to connect to our loved ones. We don’t stay in contact as much as we’d like with those that are important to us, and it’s hard to find one time that works for everyone to meet up with the gang on Zoom.
Something that I have found to be extraordinarily useful over these past few months has been writing letters. It’s a habit I started before the pandemic, but I’ve found myself leaning on it even more than ever to stay connected with my friends back home and at other universities.
It’s been a full calendar year since I’ve started writing letters back and forth with my good friend and work colleague, Grace. We’ve known each other for five years now, and have been pen-paling for one. We’ve worked together as camp counselors together every summer, but don’t get to see each other often during the school year, which is why we decided to start writing in the first place.
I called up Grace and asked her a few questions about our letter-writing experience together, and if anything had changed since we started pen-paling over one year ago.
How do you as a college student stay motivated to write letters for an entire year and beyond?
“The process of letter writing itself is really the reward. When I get letters from you, I think, ‘Oh shoot, I got to write her back!’ It’s just really nice to check the mail and see that you have this physical thing from your friend 100 miles away.”
“I think of it as a give and take, things like that, or like, ‘Caroline needs to know about this thing that just happened in my life.’ Like yeah, I could call you, but I think it’s more fun to send you a postcard, you know?”
“I mainly just stay motivated because I like to do it, I mean it helps that we’re both English majors. But having that physical letter or postcard from your friend is just the main thing for me.”
Do you think COVID had any effect on our letters in the past few months?
“Not really? Letters are pretty Covid friendly I feel like. It was nice to hear from you while all the chaos was happening, and have something stable continue that I was used to from before COVID hit.”
What have you learned about our friendship since we started doing this? Anything new?
“Just that we have the ability to be not just work friends, but friend friends? [laughs] I think we both really needed the consistency of writing to each other in order to stay in touch when we didn’t see each other after summer camp was over.”
What is your favorite part about the pen-pal process?
“Besides just getting to talk to my friend? The stationary. Definitely the cute stationery.”
What would you say to someone who wants to seriously start and commit to writing letters with their friends?
“Buy some cute postcards and prepare to make some memories!”