Making, Marinating, and Maintaining Relationships + Simple Lemon Chicken

College can be a lonely time. But, when making meaningful friendships and relationships, quality beats quantity every time. Just like this simple and delicious lemon chicken.

Making and maintaining friendships is not always as easy as it seems. People like to say it happens naturally, but what can we do when making friends ‘naturally’ fails? What many people don’t realize about friendship is the effort it takes to establish and improve the relationship.

Friendship is complex. Unlike things like marriage or family, there is no way to singularly define and protect friendship in social institutions. How do we know if we are friends with someone or just acquaintances? How do we maintain friendships even when we’re busy? Time spent together, how often you talk (online or IRL), and trust levels are all indicators of closeness.

 But anxiety tends to cloud our minds when we are trying to make friends in a new place, such as college. While we have already covered some methods to help change your perspective and lesson anxiety in the previous blog, social interactions involving making friends and deepening relationships is worth spending specific time on.

But a word of caution: It’s important to remember we can’t control all aspects of our relationships—in fact that would be unhealthy for you and others participating in the relationship. But we can make plans to do things together and take the interaction during that planned event for what is it. You can evaluate how things went later, simply saying ‘I had fun,’ ‘we enjoyed spending the time together,’ or ‘I didn’t have a good time.’

Making Meaningful Relationships in a College Setting

1.     Go to school clubs and events.

Check out the clubs your school has to offer. Most schools have hundreds of clubs, and they are open to new clubs if you want to start your own. Find a club that interests you from the school website, and go to a couple of meetings. When you go to the meetings, you can talk to the people sitting next to you or talk to those running the club. Since you are all attending the same club, you already have something in common to talk about or break the ice with.

For example, one of my high school friends told me about the Anti-Cinema Cinema Club they go to at their own college. The Anti-Cinema Cinema Club watches notoriously bad movies together. Everyone bonds over the cringy film-watching experience and make fun commentary during the movies. For example the have a yearly tradition watching The Man Who Saves the World, more widely known as Turkish Star Wars, for its completely random and unauthorized use of Star Wars clips that are completely irrelevant to the plot.

Colleges also like to host events and speakers often. Every week, my college sends out a list of weekend activities. Things like escape rooms, paint nights, ice skating, and nature hikes. While these can be fun for people to sign up with friends, you can also meet people there. And, if you have a friend in mind that you would like to spend time with, send them the event info and ask to go together. That leads me to my next tip: spending time with people.

2.     How can you forge and deepen your relationship with someone? Spend time together.

Go to places and events with people you want to deepen your relationship with, or even have a low key movie night together. You can explore different places that you haven’t been to before or show your friend old haunts you frequent. For some advice on exploring your college town, check out my first blog in the series.

Spending time with others helps you become for comfortable with each other, and you make shared memories that you can talk about in the future. Then you get to say: ‘Hey! Remember when we went to the apple orchard and got way to apples? That was so fun.’ You can even do this with past photos. Send the photo to your friend. You can simply say: ‘Hey! I’m thinking of you,’ ‘love this photo of us,’ or ‘Remember this!?’

3.     Making friends in your classes.

 This is another great way to make relationships based on shared interests. Sometimes this can be as easy as starting a conversation with your seat mate. I recommend giving a complement: saying, ‘Hey, I like your fill in blank.’

Pay attention to your classmates, if you see one person in a lot of your classes, it’s totally normal to introduce yourself to them and acknowledge that you have classes together. This can also be beneficial for having someone to talk to about assignments or class requirements, or for finding a study buddy.

I’m someone who likes to make jokes during class and participates a lot, so I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say: ‘Hey, we had this class together, how are you doing?’

4.     Keep in touch with old friends.

I’m still very close with my high school friends, even as a junior in college. But it can be easy to fall out of touch when you’re both busy in your own lives. Sometimes my friends and I haven’t talked for a few months, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t friends anymore. It does mean that when we do talk, we will have plenty to talk about. But that doesn’t mean you should let the radio silence go on for so long. Friendship still has to be maintained.

Try planning a one-on-one or group call (video or phone). If you find texting annoying, or can’t seem to ever text at the same time, schedule a call together. Just remember to call when its time. Although things can come up and your planned call can be canceled, they can always be rescheduled, too. Calls don’t have to be long either, my best friend and I go to different schools, and we just call each other randomly throughout the week. Sometimes you can’t answer a spontaneous call, but when it happens at the perfect time, it’s a great confidence boost to feel wanted or missed by someone you care about.

I hope these tips on making and maintaining friendships helps you realize that while it can be hard to start a friendship, maintaining relationships can be simpler than you would think… Just like making super tasty chicken is simpler than you would think! Today’s recipe is simple and amazingly delicious.

Okay I’ll admit it—I didn’t slice my garlic nice and pretty in thin slices in this picture because I had to chop up like 10 garlic cloves for three different meals elements! I threw it in my hand-pull food processor… sue me.

Recipe: Simple Lemon Garlic Herb Chicken Thighs

Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 chicken thighs

2 lemons

2-3 garlic cloves

Extra virgin olive oil

Poultry seasoning

Salt

Pepper

Optional: Fresh herbs of choice (or dried; I recommend rosemary, sage, and/or oregano).

Cooking Instructions:

1.     Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2.     Peel garlic cloves and slice thin length-wise. Set aside. Cut lemon in half until you have about 1 and ½ tablespoons of lemon juice (1/2 to 1 full lemon’s worth). Cut 4-6 lemon slices with the second lemon.

3.     Coat chicken thighs with extra virgin olive oil, just enough to cover on all sides. Coat chicken with lemon juice (feel free to just squeeze your lemon directly onto the chicken if you don’t feel like dirtying a measuring cup). Salt, pepper, and add poultry seasoning to both sides of the chicken thighs.

4.     Distribute the garlic slices on top of and under the chicken. Add fresh or dried herbs if desired.

5.     Place chicken on a roasting tray lined with tin foil (usually I just season my chicken right on top of the tray for a shorter clean-up). Place lemon slices near, but not on top of the chicken (they will crisp up and taste sooo good!).

6.     Cook chicken for 35 minutes, until the skin becomes crispy.

Bonus tip: How to tell if your chicken is cooked: if you stab your chicken, and the juices running out are clear—the chicken is cooked. If the juices running out are pink, the chicken is not cooked yet.

This blog post is part of a trilogy, entitled “College Student Cooks.” The collection of three blog posts shares recipes, techniques, and difficulties of cooking meals and trying to eat and maintain wellness as a college student with a busy schedule.