While I was in graduate school, I had a strong cohort of buddies who kept me sane. I named us “The Crew,” and every Thursday night, we’d meet for coffee at the local beanery.

We were all grad students from different departments, struggling through course work, qualifying exams, and dissertations. I loved having a safe place away from my professors where I could whine and complain in good company about my over-educated, under-paid life.

Mostly, though, we were there to make each other laugh.

After one Crew member’s exams, I received a call instructing me to put on my bathing suit and head out of town. We all met up at the local water park, and though we were by far the tallest people in line, we had a blast ripping down the wedgie-producing slippy slide.

Once after a big snow storm, we grabbed some sleds and headed for the hills at the local golf course driving range. After a number of impromptu experiments, we discovered that we could maximize our total velocity if we all slid down the hill with our arms linked.

However, as time went on, we did what grad students do: we graduated, got jobs, and moved away from one another.

The first academic job I was offered was in Georgia. I didn’t take it in part because everyone in the department was either significantly older than I or coupled up with kids. I knew if I moved there that I would be terribly lonely (being neither coupled nor “kiddled”). Really, though, I wasn’t ready for a career that would demand for me to face my singleness in a new community without my Crew.

A year later when I received an offer from Montana Western, I pondered seriously my single-hood in a small town so far from my family in Virginia. Ultimately, I decided that no matter where I moved, I’d have to be a grown-up about it and make new friends.

As a student, I didn’t have problems establishing friendships, mostly because circumstances dictated we students spend hours together in seminars. There’s nothing like three hours of 18^th century fiction to help you really appreciate the person sitting next to you who was experiencing the same agonizing torture from a professor who laughed and spit simultaneosly.

When I moved to Dillon last year, I found my life as a professor to be decidedly different from my life as a student. Though I spent a concentrated period of time every day in the classroom, I rarely, if ever, saw my colleagues, and, in my new career in a new town, my need for commiseration companionship was high.

Then, once winter blew into town, I was reluctant to participate in any activity that would take me away from my toasty radiators. Swathed in layers of fleece, I spent large quantities of time on my couch watching hour after hour of “Law and Order” on TNT.

However, after a month’s confinement with whooping cough, I decided to uncurl from my fetal position on the couch and reach out to make friends. I invited a colleague to dinner; she invited another colleague, and so on and so on until I found myself in the midst of a new Crew (though I’ve named us “The Girls”).

We are the ladies who lunch, the sisters who make soap, and the divas who dance. We spend a great deal of time laughing, mostly at ourselves.

I have found that particular aspect of our companionship very satisfying. While working in a serious environment such as academia, it is very easy to take oneself too seriously.

The Girls, though, have reshaped my perspective. Play time with The Girls has become an integral part of my life here in Dillon. My time with them affords me multiple belly laughs and quality time with those who enjoy junk food as much as I.

Most importantly, The Girls serve to remind me that my personal velocity will have more force if we link arms and fly down the hill together.