By Ben Salter

Office Works’ back to school sale was in full flight this week, which no doubt triggered a serious warning bell in the minds of children everywhere. The summer of *insert name here* (George) is over, and the long year ahead, of carrying too many schoolbooks and writing obscenities all over your friend’s pencil case, has begun.

Kids either went back to school last week, or are hanging on for dear life to the little time they have left. The synchronised chanting of “I don’t wanna go to school” in contrast to parents screaming with joy is a beautiful thing. I think now’s a good time to tell you that most universities are no where near ready to return; The University of Adelaide doesn’t return, for the real semester, until March 1.

Anyone who has finished school will tell you it’s the best time of your life. It’s funny. When you’re young all you want to be is older, but once you’re grown up you crave the freedom of youth. I’m not going to lie to you children. Uni is better. Mainly because there’s a bar and you can make lunch last as long as you want and nobody will send you to the principle’s office. In saying that, spending 6 hours everyday doing minimal work, before year 12, with your mates isn’t exactly a bad way to pass the time; better than cleaning up after school children, I suspect.

It’s time to go stationary shopping (on a side note, why is this always so fun?), contact your books with Batman, and for mums everywhere to force their children into shoes one size too big. School is no longer out all summer.

On a slightly related, a professor has ruined everything, yet again. We have too many friends, particularly too many on Facebook. Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University, has come out and said that humans are only capable of remembering 150 meaningful relationships. After taking into account that the figure includes family members, all of a sudden it’s time to start firing some friends, and taking future applications very seriously.

“The interesting thing is that you can have 1500 friends (online) but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” Professor Dunbar said.

A ‘meaningful relationship’ is someone that you contact at least once a year and care about, possibly ruling out bosses. You must also understand how they relate to other people in your social groups.

At the time of writing I have exactly 300 friends on Facebook. And no, I didn’t just happen to have double the amount, check it for yourself if you have me as a friend. Of that approximately 275 are friends from school, uni, previous jobs and people I’ve generally met throughout my life that have decided to inter-stalk me. Around 5 are family members, of my own age as having older family on Facebook is a mistake, and the final 20 are from MyMedia. Now I have the tedious task of firing half my friends.

At first I thought 150 meaningful relationships was high. But after coming to the realisation that it includes family and colleagues, as well as friends you contact less than twice a year, it doesn’t sound like all that much. Heading back to the school scene, cherish your days having too many friends, even if you have a love/hate relationship with almost everyone, as is the norm in middle school. As a general observation it appears that as you get older your inner circle of friends gets smaller. A wise man, named Jerry Seinfeld, once said to me through a TV screen that it’s hard to make new friends when you’re an adult. When you’re a kid you can be friends with someone simply because they are there, and now when you’re a teenager you can be friends with someone because they added you on Facebook.

So, if you have 150 Facebook friends there is no need to add anymore, so long as you actually like these people. All of those people who think they’re “cool” by adding every suggested friend, and spamming their way to 800+, have got some big cuts to make. Oh, and happy back to school day everyone that isn’t going back to school; it’s always an exciting time for the rest of society. Condolences if you’re heading back and are still not convinced it’s actually not all that bad.

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