Wharton Student Learns Friendship Is Okay After Professor Calls It 'Social Capital'

Seth Fisher’s (W '22) life changed forever after Economics Professor Gizem Saka called friendship a form of social capital. “Capital is any asset. There can be physical capital like machines, human capital like education, or social capital like friendships and connections,” Professor Saka said in her introduction lecture. 

“That whole thing really changed my mindset,” said Fisher. “I invested time into my first friend after that class. Of course, my allocation of time only got more efficient as I learned to hedge my friendships. You’ve got to diversify, right? Have your network be able to survive shocks like breakups and the such? It would have revolutionized my whole freshman year if I had friends.”

Seth now has over 35 friends on Linkedin and nearly 20  friends on facebook. He is hoping to branch out to new friend markets in the future. “I just made a Tik Tok and I was thinking about rushing or maybe joining Tinder. The future is women, right?”