By Ava Swearingen, Student Writer
Some friendships fizzle out after college as people scatter around the world to start their professional lives. Others last a lifetime. Elizabeth McDowell (’12) has had the privilege of experiencing the latter. McDowell and six of her closest friends went from sharing dorms and deadlines at Harding to sharing group chats and reunion plans instead.
As many stories begin, McDowell met this group of friends during her freshman year, but they didn’t really get to know each other until they all joined the same social club, Zeta Rho. Social clubs are spaces designed to build close relationships, and like many before them, these girls gelled quickly.
As the years went on, the group only got closer, traveling, studying and even living together.
“By the last two years especially, we were inseparable,” McDowell said. “We just loved being together.”
So, when senior year came and went, the girls knew that these were friendships they were unwilling to let go. McDowell in particular knew the importance of remaining intentional in her adult friendships. She had seen this modeled by her parents, particularly by her father, who still gets together with his college friends every year.
McDowell thought her group of friends should do the same. Pretty quickly, they decided to make Labor Day weekend their time to reunite, regardless of where they were or what was happening in their lives. Over the last 14 years they have done just that, picking a place and sharing a weekend together. Here, they get to experience a remnant of that dorm life feeling: having a big sleepover with your friends every night.
This year, they decided to do something extra special. As the years have passed, McDowell and her friends have gotten married and had children. While Labor Day weekend is just for the girls, they’ve been eager to find a time to bring their husbands and children along all at once. They found that opportunity with Spring Sing.
During Spring Sing weekend, they converged from five different states to Little Rock at one friend’s home. The group totaled 35 people: seven friends, their husbands, 20 kids and one little one on the way. Over the weekend, they spent time sharing meals, laughing together, playing with the kids, and enjoying everything going on at Harding’s campus. McDowell’s favorite memories from the weekend were watching several of the kids fall in love with Spring Sing after seeing it for the first time and throwing a surprise baby shower for their friend, Hannah. McDowell is comfortable enough in these friendships to know how deeply they feel for each other in the hard parts of life, but weekends like this allow them to feel the joys of life deeply, too.
As McDowell reflects on the course of these friendships, she thinks it is no surprise that they got their start at Harding.
“Harding is such a unique spot. … We all had faith development here in different ways, which was a huge bonding experience of growing together in our love for Christ, leaving our hometowns and what we grew up with. Saying, ‘Wait, what is our faith? How can we make it our own?’; We got to share in that. You wouldn’t have that at another school.”
That foundation of faithful friendship has blossomed into relationships that are challenging in the best ways. McDowell and her friends are constantly growing together and pushing each other to be better. They wouldn’t have it any other way.
For Labor Day 2026, they’ll be meeting the newest baby of the group and surrounding their friend as she becomes a new mom. The year after that will find them in Michigan. Wherever they end up in the future, though, McDowell and her friends will continue to be bonded by a flourishing life of love, grace and joy, all of which they get to share with each other.
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