Some works of art are so legendary they transcend subjectivity, globally recognized as the greatest of all time: Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But who decides what makes this list? It’s an age-old question in the creative field. Google says that great art is up to interpretation, but my high school English teacher made me write a four-page paper arguing that Joja Siwa’s music was great art, so that can’t possibly be true. It seems some people’s opinions have to be worth more than others. Or maybe, if enough people agree on the goodness of something, it becomes great.
I’m not entirely sure how many people need to approve in order to elevate art from average to out-of-this-world, but for the purpose of this article, I’m hoping that the answer is five, as there is one medium of art that has single-handedly transformed the study abroad experience for me and my roommates, Sophie, JB, Jonathan, and Xander:
The debrief.
When you’re studying abroad, you don’t have the luxury of building friendships. There just isn’t enough time for a slow swim from one end of the pool to the next. But let me tell you something; there is nothing quite like that jump off the high dive with complete strangers.
What we’ve learned in our nearly nine weeks of living together in Sydney, Australia, is that the key to getting close quickly is to focus on the present. That’s not to say there’s no validity in learning about the years of life that existed before we met each other, but getting to know someone is so much more than knowing the facts about them—it’s understanding who they are. It’s a feeling that runs so deep, it speaks a language only you five can understand.
You can learn so much about a person in the way they tell and listen to stories—even in their preference for telling or listening. Sophie is theatrical, outspoken, and objectively hilarious. JB oscillates between a warm, down-to-earthness and just being so damn happy to be there. Xander is youthful and grand. He is humorously arrogant and oblivious. And Jonathan is unpredictable. You think you’re safe until he smacks you with the wittiest comeback…or a soft shell taco.
If you do it right, you’ll find yourself like me—utterly in love with your friends. So, allow me to divulge the secrets of this expression of art.
The beauty of a good debrief is its versatility. In its rawest form, it’s nothing more than a conversation between two or more people sharing the events of a certain experience. But at its best, its mightiest, its most magnificent, it is an earth-shattering Shakespearean retelling performed vivaciously in front of an audience. The audience being all your friends crowded around you roaring in laughter, eagerly interrupting to add even the most minor details, and reviling in the joys, frustrations, hardships, and embarrassments of your life.
There is but one cardinal rule when participating in a debrief: Withholding the truth is as good as lying. No matter how humiliating your dance floor makeout was, it is your responsibility to divulge every cliché pickup line and your friends’ responsibility to share every photo taken when cementing your moment of weakness in history and their camera rolls for eternity.
When trying to maximize gross apartment happiness and the success of your debrief, you want to consider the size of the room in relation to the number of people contributing. A living room debrief is a classic, but our data would suggest that densier rooms may lead to greater group intimacy, as one of our best debriefs to date took place among eight people in my tiny one-person bedroom. It was at three thirty in the morning after searching for a rogue friend in the train station for two hours. My point is, sometimes forcing your friends to be physically uncomfortable as well as emotionally uncomfortable may add to the, say, je ne sais quoi of the debrief. And to my earlier comment, the later it is, the more delirious you are and the more unhinged the conversation becomes.
When debriefing, it is also important to remind yourself that you are not a philosopher. It is not your job to debate the ethics of anyone’s behavior. Sure, one could argue that flirting with a random guy just to get a free drink, nearly getting into a fistfight with three locals on the train, or making the shy Uber driver sing you “Happy Birthday” when it is very much not your birthday (hypothetical situations of course) are immoral acts, but analysis of the situation is for later. Your only concern should be sharing, and sharing in the most entertaining way possible.
I’ve never considered myself an artist, at least not in the conventional way. I can’t draw, can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act, but I can be a drama queen. I can tell stories. And I can listen as my friends tell theirs. The adults that raised us argued that gossip and self-deprecation were dividing forces, but I beg to differ. There’s something so unifying about ranting, something so inherently human in how we express our most chaotic feelings in such a careless way. Call it what you want. Judge if you must. But debriefing has led me to build some of the richest, most joy-filled friendships of my entire life. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.