For English teacher Randy Holaday, spending quality time with others can look like watching RuPaul’s Drag Race with his boyfriend, playing Pokémon Unite with his friends or having weekend brunches with family. He believes that spending quality time is the most important part of maintaining relationships.

“I can usually tell if somebody really wants to be my friend, or wants to spend time with me or wants to keep a relationship going by the way they prioritize their time,” Holaday said. “[Spending] time together is my love language and that’s just how I see people’s affection — how they prioritize spending time with me.”

Holaday maintains many long-distance relationships, such as calling his sister who lives in San Diego weekly, despite disliking phone calls, and visiting her every couple of months. He also has a friend who lives on the East Coast and mentions that although they are “collectively awful” at staying in contact, he would “drop everything” to prioritize spending time with her when she visits.

Junior Amogh Rajagopal also calls her sister, who is attending college, three to four times a week.

“I think it’s pretty beneficial just to keep in touch [with] her, because we don’t want to lose the relationship that we’ve built up over time. It’s always nice to hear about what other people are doing in different areas,” Rajagopal said. 

He believes that spending quality time with others can also be an opportunity to explore new things — in his case, football.

“I never really followed football until a few years ago when one of my friends [who] was a huge football fan, and I was like, ‘Huh, why is he so interested?’” Rajagopal said. “I went over to his house to watch [the] Super Bowl. After that, I thought the game was pretty fun. The next season I started following it and that also translated into basketball so now I really like to follow sports​​.”

However, Rajagopal still believes that shared interests are integral to building a strong relationship, as he watches movies with his family and plays sports with his friends.

Senior Janhavi Revashetti spends quality time with her family by going to the movies and family vacations, and has “spontaneous” hangouts with her friends by doing homework together at cafes. While Revashetti does want to prioritize spending that time with those she’s close to, she struggles to find a balance between using that time for other pursuits.

“I feel like because of how intensive Monta Vista is with schoolwork and how competitive everyone is, I get sucked into academics and extracurriculars, and I oftentimes prioritize that, and then friends and family time come[s] later,” Revashetti said.

Rajagopal also says that spending quality time with others should be part of one’s daily life.

“I think that spending quality time with people is really important — that’s been especially true over the past year or two,” Rajagopal said. “As we return to in-person [and] start to get back into the routine that we [had] — finishing school, going back home and just watching TV or finishing your homework — [you should] make sure to talk to people, check in on them and make sure to check yourself as well. Make sure that you talk to people and foster those relationships.”