One Person

They say it only takes one person can change your life.

My freshman year, I had an interesting English 101 teacher, Ruth Sundberg. Ruth was in her '70s and crazy as a bat. She was obsessed with the symphony, and once I convinced her that if we went to the symphony, we should get extra credit. Oh, mind you, this was a 9AM on MWF, so naturally, we had to find some way to make it fun.

One day after class, I was in the Commons getting sushi and minding my own business and some girl whose name I couldn't pronounce (yes, it was Sabiha Arna) jumps in front of me and asks me to go the symphony with her. Hesistantly, I say yes, I mean, I wanted the extra credit and why not make a friend?

We went to the symphony together, and then we pretty much became best friends (which had nothing to do with the fact that she cut her bangs to look like my bangs). We started getting Starbucks before class, and then we began to make other friends in the class, one of which was named Meaghan Wall.

We may have bonded over lattes and boys, but somewhere along the line, something else happened. When I found out Meaghan was in a sorority, I told her I wished I had went through recruitment. She ended up inviting me to hang out with some of her sisters, and in due time, I became a Delta Gamma.

Around this same time, Sabiha had invited me to go on a leadership retreat with Circle K International, a collegiate service organization. It was then that I met Ali Massoud.

A year later, I'm now Vice President of Circle K, and Sabiha is President. She and I have been through hell and back in our friendship, but somewhere along the way, we realized that some things are meant to last forever. The hardest things can be the best things, if you want them to be.

Ali has become one of my very best friends, and no matter how conceited he pretends to be, I know he loves me to the world and back, and at the end of the day, we are eachother's family. And if it weren't for Ali, I never would have met my diva twin, Ranjani Ponnazhagan (yes, I had to look on Facebook to spell it right). I've only known her two months, but something tells me that if it there will be many more months to come.

Meaghan and I may not be as close as we were, but she will always be my sister and hold a very special place in my heart. And I can never repay her for introducing me to the greatest sisterhood I could be blessed to be a part of. Without this, I never would have met my wonderful Big, Dianne Lee. Or my amazing littles, Grace Eagleson and Christen Carver. These are the girls who teach me what it means to be loved, every single day. Every single member of Zeta Xi has changed my life, and brightens my day, everyday.

Some (not all, I have many wonderful friends outside of those mentioned here) of the most important people in my life are there because of one crazy old lady. When someone told me I'd meet people in college that would change my life, I didn't know those relationships would come from a dusty classroom in the Humanties building. The chain of relationships don't end here, but these few people walked in and changed my life in an irrevocable way, and they are doing so everyday. I'm not going to turn this into a love letter because Lord knows most of you don't emote.

I just want to thank Ruth, though. Thank you, Ruth for allowing me to be myself and embracing my crazy. Also, thank you for allowing me to extend deadlines, get extra credit, and occasionally call off class, if only all my teachers let me make up the rules like that. Unfortunately, the real world wasn't like your English class, but now I have amazing people to help me through it.