The Concept of "Fam"

Hello! My name is Vanessa, and this is my first-ever blog post for UIC Radio. Normally, I’m the host of the podcast Diva Alert!, but today I’m coming to you a little differently. In my most recent episode, Episode 5, I talked about a concept that has been making me think about life from a whole new perspective. That concept? #Fam.

To start, I want to establish that I live in an 8-person suite. Whenever I tell people this, they’re always so shocked that I’ve been secretly living in harmony with 7 different people for 3 months. But it’s a lot easier than it sounds (as I’m sure many others living on campus can confirm). Almost every other day, we find ourselves hanging out in the common space doing whatever we need to do- whether that be working on our work, talking to each other, or watching Survivor nonstop on our TV. 

Picture this: a beautiful Sunday night in October. A total of 8 people in our living room, all doing different things. One of my suitemates gets up, takes a picture of all of us in our own worlds, and posts it on her story. The caption reads as follows:

“cuz why is this fam??”

The caption, combined with the number of people living cohesively in one space, and Paper Planes by MIA in the story, really made me think. Why IS this fam? 

Since then, we’ve all begun to go out to Sunday brunches at Hashbrowns down the street- an affordable breakfast place with really good food after a rough Saturday night. Together, eating breakfast together, it’s so easy to feel like a family (especially when you’ve been out of your actual family’s house for months now). But the glaring reminder in the back of my mind that we’re all still just college students living in a dorm together snaps me back to reality. We’re not all family, but rather something more casual… the perfect word to describe our dynamic is “fam”. Nothing else can do it justice.

Now, after this realization, any time we feel any sense of warmth or connection as a group, we turn to each other and say, “Why is this fam?” The term “fam” has become ingrained in our vocabulary, just like the other phrases from each other’s vocabulary that we use almost every day after becoming a part of each other's lives. Fam could mean a variety of things, but I think its most basic term is something that brings people (who would normally have no relation to each other) together almost as close as family, but not quite.

Hopefully, at this point in the year, whether you’re a college freshman or otherwise, you’ve found your fam here at UIC. I’m really fortunate to have found a group of people I can call fam this early into my college career. And if you haven’t found your fam just yet, don’t worry, I’m sure your fam will find you soon enough.