Rebecca: New York Style Dehli is the longest running Opinion column the Daily has had. Not only is it the longest running, but it is the only one column written by two people. Seeing as we’re seasoned Daily writers, Pooja and I have written a commencement issue before. However, we have never written a commencement this close to home. We’re graduating. We have no clue how this happened, two girls from big cities found each other in the suburb of Somerville. Our relationship was love at first sight, and Pooja has stayed by my side as I simultaneously evolve and devolve. When we first met, I was 12 pounds lighter and 10 shades darker; however, my brain did not yet have the over $200,000 worth of knowledge in it that it does now. Pooja and I bonded over our hatred of mastering chemistry and our love of watching our hallmates fall in and out of lust with each other.
In our four years of college, Pooja has been my constant, not only my best friend and confidante but also my sister. The hardest part about graduating will be living in a different timezone from hers, but we’re in contact every minute of the day, so we can make it through this. We have to thank the Tufts community for its support in the form of questions, kind words and readership, and as always, we must thank Annabelle Roberts for giving us the opportunity to shine, recognizing the talent Pooja and I always knew we had.
Pooja: “Don’t take life for granted." I feel like that term has been force-fed to me a lot lately, but it took me a while to figure out what it really means. I recently came to an artless realization: it’s not your own life they’re talking about. People say to live life to the fullest and to enjoy every moment like it is your last. But that’s just it — not everyone can afford to live life to the fullest, and most of your moments will not be your last. These next couple of months are going to be lonely and terrifying and downright core-shaking. Who we are will no longer be defined by the lives we’ve made together these past four years. We are, after all, commencing; our lives are trajectories that keep moving forward.
So, it’s not our lives we mustn’t take for granted; it’s the lives we have made together as students, roommates, mentors and allies. It’s the relationships we have built with our favorite nutty professors, with the sweet women who give us coffee in Tower during our greatest hours of need or with those certain people you’d always wanted to ask for lunch but never got the chance. Our individual lives are moving forward, but these lives, these days or hours or even minutes of interactions are the ones we are saying goodbye to. There are fractions of lives we’ve made with people on this hill that we barely know, and there are lives we have carefully built with people on this campus that have found a way into who we call family. These are the lives, big and small, that we must not take for granted.
So, how do we do that? We carry them with us. To use the words of my favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut, I’m asking you notice when you were happy. Think, at some point, about the ways in which each life has contributed to yours, and exclaim or murmur, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”. It’s as simple as that, class of 2016, and last piece of advice from your two favorite longest-running columnists. I don’t know what I’m doing to do without Rebecca either next year, but all I can say is, these past four years have been pretty damn nice. On that note, we're tuning out for the last and final time (always serving non-kosher advice in Jumbo-sized servings),
Your very own,
New York Style Delhi
NYSD: If this isn't nice, what is?
