A good chunk of the TV shows I grew up with feature a friend group whose lives are eventful enough to fill about a hundred episodes. You’ve seen these friends – in Friends, in How I Met Your Mother, in Community, and the like.

This story is about Gorazd Gajdov, a member of one such friend group. Gorazd, Marko, Stefan and Mate are four boys from Skopje, students at Georgi, who grew up – and are still growing up – together. They hang out in Kapishtec and Vodno and visit each other at home. They help each other with chores, so last week they helped with Marko’s mom’s garden. (Gorazd mowed the lawn.) They’re kids (almost-adults?) with a long history of jokes and pranks, whose main pastime is competition.

They compete in everything. Stefan leads at push-ups – 53 without stopping – and everyone’s trying to beat him. “I couldn’t even dream of 50 pushups a month ago. But now I’m at 43!” Gorazd tells me. (Inspired by this conversation, I double-checked whether I can do 50. The verdict: nope.) Their competition started with less productive activities, like Apex Legends, but evolved to running, hiking, and music.

The point of these competitions isn’t winning – at least, it isn’t mainly winning, although winning is nice. The point is to motivate each other to learn something and get better, which is why they keep nudging themselves towards new goals. Last year, they realized they didn’t know much about music. So, they decided to hold weekly music meetings, where each of them would bring a song from a different genre that he’d like the others to know about. One of the entries last week was SAF, a rap group from the 90s, which Gorazd described as “old Macedonian rap” and sent me into an identity crisis.

In this way, Gorazd mostly competes with himself. When he trained fencing, he wanted to improve his technique – instead of only scoring off of competitors’ hands, he tried to broaden his range of attack. When he reads, he usually looks for self-improvement books in the style of Atomic Habits by James Clear. And when he grabs the guitar, he wants to learn new melodies – he’s set a deadline of 3 weeks to learn Capricho Arabe by Francisco Tarrega. 

Before the last interview, we ask the finalists to send us a video titled “This is me”. Gorazd’s video features a total of one scene where he’s alone – and even in that one, the cameraman is Mate. Going to UWC will inevitably disrupt this dynamic, so they’re using this summer to slowly get used to goodbyes. The plan is to call once a week. But just in case, they’re setting up goals: by next summer, I want you to beat me in basketball, or I want you to run a 5k in under 20 minutes. For Gorazd, my only challenge is: by next summer, I want you to come home and be able to say “whoa, look at how much I’ve grown.”

July 2023,
Bobo Stankovikj