Of the 45 pieces I’ve written for The News-Letter, every single one is written about or with love. Love as in passion to share my opinions; love as in the desire to talk about the science that I fell in love with; love for family, roommates, friends new and old, for moments remembered. What makes it easy is being surrounded by love constantly — I would not have the strength to write so deeply about my life were it not for the sheer capacity for love that can be found in my friends and family. It is this repertoire and the lessons I’ve learned from my loved ones in the past three years that qualify me to write, as my final goodbye to the paper and to the University, my own formal definition for love, in all its forms.
Love is impatient. Love is double texts, phone calls answered mid-nap or Brody Reading Room cram sessions. Love is knocking at Claire’s door to make sure she’s awake for our café run. Love is “I can’t wait to see you” exchanged between me and my beloved suffering readers, our quartet of high school friends-turned-sisters. It is “come over as soon as you can, I have a drink I really want you to try,” and “let’s get there early; I want to leave as soon as possible, so hurry up!” It is the desire to be surrounded by people who make hours spent together pass by in a blur; it is counting down the seconds until you get to see them again.
Love is inconvenient. It’s midnight trips to the Medstar emergency room, taking selfies with Claire while she’s getting an IV drip and mass-ordering electrolyte powder on Instacart for her to use the next day. It’s Claire making me hot tea with honey when I’m sick and asking if it’s sweet enough. It’s picking up an extra meal from Levering during sophomore year because my old suitemate hadn’t eaten anything that day. It is staying in Clark Hall until 3 a.m., running tests on incredibly stinky goat liver with my old design team; it’s taking breaks in between testing rounds to GrubHub momos from Harbor Tandoor or paneer pizza from Kohinoor. It’s staying back at print night until Buse and Lana finish reading the very last news piece and checking layouts on broken-down iMacs until my vision blurs.
Love is an imposition. It is always showing up with a snack, whether it’s brownies at Derek’s pop-up café or an extra serving of a snack my friends love to power through Computational Cardiology study sessions. It’s Prisha and I baking a cardamom olive oil cake with candied oranges to celebrate Alp finishing his MCAT. It’s Hassan and I synchronizing our schedules to plan an Olive Garden catering party; it’s eating mediocre pasta with buttery breadsticks because we all want to capture some of the nostalgia of the first memories we had with it. It’s Neha taking two hours' worth of trains up to Baltimore just to celebrate my birthday with me.
With all these characteristics, I arrive at my final definition for love. It’s like weeds: once its roots have been planted, it will never leave you. My closest friends now are the ones I met in my first months here; they entangled their roots with my own from our very first weeks together. They have buried themselves into every facet of my life, from trauma bonds formed in sophomore year classes to late-night conversations on beanbag chairs, hugging our stuffed animals to our chests. They have infected me with their passion for food, for coffee, for art, for experiencing everything possible in our limited time together.
This infestation is evident in everything I own: every gift, every birthday card, even half of the seasonings in my kitchen cabinet, comes from my friends. My most defining personality traits have flourished because of them — they are the co-conspirators on my 10-week Beli streak and the enablers of my debilitating addiction to eclectic caffeinated beverages. They are the recipients of every new recipe because, apparently, my love language is overfeeding the people I care most about. They have followed me from 19 to 20 to 21 and have left no doubt in my mind that they will be by my side as I walk across the graduation stage and in the walls of my new apartment when I start my first “big-girl” job in June. I carry them with me wherever I go.
So to my friends who became family — thank you for making my life so beautifully inconvenient. I am undeniably happy to be stuck with you, forever. You’re not rid of me yet.
Shreya Tiwari is graduating with a degree in Biomedical Engineering and is from Austin, Texas. She is a former Managing Editor for The News-Letter.
