Okay, so you’re doing homework. What are you working on?
S: I’m just drawing.
Drawing. On your iPad?
S: Mmhm!
Wow. That’s incredible.
L: Yeah she’s really good.
How’d you get into that?
S: Well, I just can’t bring all my paints and stuff here, so then I just started drawing on my iPad.
Okay, how long have you been painting, drawing, doing art?
S: Forever.
Forever? Okay, so when you came out of the womb…
S: I just came out of the womb and I started drawing.
Okay, awesome. What are you drawing right now?
S: My sister.
Are you an art major?
S: No, I’m thinking physics at the moment. I’m not sure yet.
Okay, so art’s just a hobby.
S: Yeah. But I do want it part of my career. I don’t know how to incorporate it.
Art and physics? There’s gotta be something.
Do you have any hobbies?
L: I like to run and read. And bake.
Do you have a favorite book?
L: Not really, actually. I don’t know. I like a lot of different things.
What are you reading right now?
L: I’m reading the third book in the Me Before You trilogy. It’s really good.
Oh, that’s sad.
L: Yeah, it is pretty sad. But–
S: We like our sad–
L: We like our sad books. [laughing] Yeah, I like sad, realistic fiction.
Have you seen the movie?
L: Yeah, pretty good.
Yeah, that got me. Do you have a favorite recipe?
L: Not really.
You just bake whatever?
L: Yeah.
So why do you guys like to hang out in the Wellness Center?
L: It’s pretty.
S: It’s really calming. We like to sit in the sun. Like before this, we always have bench time. After class we sit in the benches outside of Small for, like, hours. Well, we sit in between for an hour, but then I’m just like always there. Because we just love sitting in the sun and doing work there.
Then bench at Small?
S: It’s like the circle benches and the trees all have pink flowers that fall on you. And there’s a lot of bugs, but we still really love it anyway.
L: But it’s been too cold, so we come here instead.
How did you guys meet?
S: We’re hallmates.
What year are you guys?
L: Freshmen.
Where do you guys live?
L: Lion L.
S: GGV. I totally forgot what it was for a second. [laughing]
Did you guys know each other before?
S: No, our friend group just like formed.
L: From people in our hall.
S: Yeah. And now we do everything together. Like all the games. Every single one.
Do you do Caf dinners together?
L: Yeah.
S: Yeah, we do Caf and Sadler. We always play games. We love Just Dance. There’s so much Just Dance. Like my roommate’s incredible. Gets five stars on every single one.
Who has a Wii?
S: We have a hall Wii in our-our–
L: In the lounge.
S: And all of us brought games. Like I brought all the Just Dances. This other guy brought the Wii and we all just play. This other guy brought all the controllers.
Oh that’s amazing. Do you ever whip out those dance moves in any other context.
S: I mean I feel like–
L: [laughing] No.
S: Just besides dancing while we walk. Or like, sing. But that’s mostly what I do.
L: Yeah that’s a you thing.
S: That’s a me thing–dancing and singing. I always have a song in my head. Like I wake up with one and I just like constantly sing it. So I look like I’m talking to myself when I’m walking, but I’m just constantly singing.
I love that. What song do you have in your head right now? Or today?
S: Uhh, hmm. What song was I–
L: You always have one. Oh, you were just singing!
S: I was singing this entire time.
L: I forget what you were singing, though.
S: Right this morning I was listening to a song called Butch by Saint Motel, which is like an indie rock band. And that was really good. And then I started singing a bunch of bad pop songs that just came in my head. Recently, I’ve been waking up with the Alma Mater suck in my head and I don’t know why.
Oh my God. Go Tribe. I don’t think I actually know the words to the Alma Mater all the way through.
L: I just know, like, when you scream William & Mary.
S: I just know ‘Hark upon the gale.’ That’s basically all I know, but that’s always in my head.
Okay, so what’s your favorite thing about each other?
L: That’s a hard question.
S: I like how caring she is. Like she’s always looking out for me and making sure I’m okay. Like, even yesterday everyone thought I died at dinner because I got distracted because I saw my other guy friends from the dorm, and I sat and talked to them for forty minutes and then she was like looking around–
L: I searched the dining hall. I was so scared. I went out to the bathroom and looked under the doors to see if I saw her feet. And then I went back into the dining hall and left again and there she was.
S: And when I’m upset she’s always there for me. And now we started a gratitude journal together, so know we’re writing stuff that we liked about our days and stuff we jointly did together that we enjoyed.
L: Yeah, that’s a fun time.
Is that just with you guys or the whole friend group?
L & S: Just us.
L: I think they’re secretly jealous.
S: I think they are too.
Do you write in it every day?
L: Yeah, well–
S: For the days we started. [laughing]
L: Yesterday was only the second day, so.
S: So I started one in the beginning of the year. And we were dying at what I wrote because it’s really cringey, like who I used to be friends with.
L: It’s fun to have stuff to look back on.
Especially in these years.
L: We’re hoping that if we do it together then we’ll keep each other accountable. I like how fun Sindu is. Like she can be serious if you need to be serious, but also she has her own pizzaz that she brings to everything.
S: I’m kind of more of the distracting one and she’s the one that gets us focused. I need her for my study sessions. We were in chem last semester together and then I would always talk and sing. And I would always draw on both of our notebooks.
L: She drew on my notebook all the time. She said that our teacher looked like a pear and so my whole notebooks just has, like, pears.
S: And with bob haircuts on them. I’d draw like a bunch a flowers and then I’d turn them into turtles. And then I wrote song lyrics in them and that’s like all over all my stuff. I can show if you want.
Wow. We would love to see.
L: Now she’s teaching me how to draw turtles. I’m not as good as an artist as she is.
Wow.
S: I have like another big page of stuff in here somewhere.
Oh my God that’s beautiful.
S: And I always have lyrics everywhere.
So you have class together. What is this class you have?
S: Last semester we had chem together.
L: Now we don’t have any classes and it’s very sad.
Dang it, you’ll have to plan for that.
L: Yeah.
S: I think we’re going to take bio together. Basically I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, so I’m just going to take things and everything.
L: And I don’t really know what I’m doing, either. So it works out well!
That’s fine. That’s totally fine.
L: We’re trying to take the MACE career exploration course together to figure things out.
I always wanted to do that. And then I got too old. ‘Cause you can only do that as a freshman or sophomore. And then I was like, um, I still don’t know what I’m doing. I could still use that; that’d be great.
S: ‘Cause I love creative writing and art and everything, but then I also love science and I don’t know what to do about it now. Because I only took, like, physics and math and everyone was like, “Oh, I’m going to get a PhD in physics,” and I went around saying the same thing. And then I’m like, wait a minute. I don’t even know if I want to do that anymore. Because I don’t think I can do anything that doesn’t incorporate creativity.
What about you? What are you interested in?
L: Um, I know I want to work with kids. But I don’t know in what context necessarily. So, I’ll probably major in psychology or education or health science or something. But, we’ll see.
So, because you’re a freshman, I have to ask this question: What is one thing that you’ve learned at William & Mary so far?
L: I’m kind of learning that there’s a lot of opportunities out there and you kind of gotta figure out what you want to do and what’s more important. I think it’s been hard to try and figure out who I am and what I want to do with my life. And also, just my time at William & Mary. I’m figuring out there isn’t time for everything and you got to leave time to just hang out with your friends.
S: Yeah.
Sit on the bench at Small.
L: Exactly.
S: I’m learning, too, how to have fun and relax with people and not be afraid to be myself. And surround myself with people who are similar to me in a sense that they respect each other. And we just have fun and we don’t have a lot of drama in our friend group at all. All we do is just laugh. Like we’re the really loud ones in Sadler. So everyone just turns around and is like, uhh.
That’s character-building, being that friend group.
Did you guys form this friend group during orientation, or was it more towards the middle of fall?
S: I think it was during orientation.
L: It was mostly during orientation.
S: Yeah. Most of our hall is good friends with each other. It’s like us, a solid six-girl group, and then we’re friends with some of the guys. I think I’m friends with a lot more of the guys than you. There’s one guy who lives below us, and to tell him I was coming, I stomped really loudly on my floor. And then he was like, why are you breaking the building? And then I ran downstairs.
L: The walls are very thin in GGV, so you can hear–
S: Everything. There’s one girl who sings “Country Road” and “Mo Bamba” at three in the morning.
L: Like opera-y.
S: I try to harmonize with her and everyone’s like, we can all hear you.
There’s truly nothing like a freshman dorm. And then you get into sophomore year, things start to change.And you feel so nostalgic for your freshman dorm.
S: One of my friends and I talk to each other through the ceiling. So she lives like, this side of me, and we open the ceilings, we can see each other’s head, and we use our flashlight and we start talking to each other.
You can open the ceilings?
L: Yeah, you push up the tiles.
S: Yeah we open the ceiling tiles and we went into the ceiling and then we talk to each other. [laughing]
L: The wall isn’t all the way up, so you can see into the other person’s room.
S: And it’s easy to reach the ceilings. Every morning I hit my head because I’m here and the ceilings just right there.
You climbed in the ceiling? Let me get that straight.
L: Wait, no, no, no. ‘Cause her bed–
S: Her room is like right across that way. It’s on the other side of the hall.
So you can see her through the hallway?
L: Like when you push up the ceiling tiles, you’re in the ceiling. But the wall between their rooms doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling. So you can see over it. So if they pop their head up.
S: And we were like dying. My roommate was just watching as all the ceiling dust was crumbling on the ground. And she was like, “What are you doing?” And me and my friend were dying of laughter.
Yeah, I lived in Botetourt and we had the ceiling tiles. And we would always check to make sure that things weren’t hidden up there. Because some people would just hide stuff. And it’s just like a treasure hunt.
S: Some guy in Lion K found a Chewbacca suit up in the ceiling. We’re just like, uhhh.
L: But there’s nothing in ours. We checked.
L: We had one day when one of our friends came over to all of our rooms and we checked each others’ ceiling.
Okay, so if I have one more question: When was the last time you laughed really, really hard?
L: Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like we laugh a lot. It’s too much laughing. But that’s not a bad thing.
S: Like we have one friend who can’t listen to a word anyone says and then she’ll just start laughing. And we just look at each other and we die of laughter. Oh, it was dinner when we saw the football player. We laughed really hard at that.
L: Oh yeah. When you started–
S: Okay, so we are obsessed with all the games here. So we go to gymnastics games, basketball, football, soccer, field hockey. We’ve been to all of them. And we know a bunch of players by their numbers. Like, yo, number 19 is in our class. I, like, died when Chase, the 9th grade basketball player was in my COLL class. Like, I was so excited. And then during dinner we saw… who was he, Number 19?
L: Number 9.
S: He’s Number 9 on the football team. And we saw him and my friend was like–we stopped our conversation–we’re like, Number 9 is here. And then I got up and craned my neck. And I was just like, Sindu, sit down! I was like, where, where?
I used to be like that with basketball team.
L: It’s cool to know them.
Yeah, they’re like normal college athletes roaming around.
S: We’re like so excited to see all of them. [laughing]
That’s funny.
Sindu, is this a snitch on your backpack?
S: Yes.
Books or movies? Or both?
S: Both.
What’s your favorite book?
S: Half-Blood Prince.
Why?
S: Um, well, I like how they brought in love and normal teenage problems into it. And then I loved all the action and I loved the backstory of Voldemort because I think he’s an amazing character.
And I love the story of Snape, too, and how he’s the half-blood prince to Harry and stuff.
It’s always amazing to me how she came up with that. Like how che conceived that.
S: But I like a lot of them. The Deathly Hallows is also one of my favorites. I didn’t like it as much as a movie, but as a book I really enjoyed it because it was super action-packed. I love the Chamber of Secrets because I love snakes and spiders. One of my friends told me he hates the book because he said snakes and spiders ruined it. And I was like, we can’t be friends now.
Do you have a favorite book series?
L: As a kid, I used to be obsessed with the Series of Unfortunate Events. But that was elementary school. I was never super into Harry Potter.
S: See, I’m in love with Harry. I think of the perfect guy for me, and I think of Harry.
L: Well I came to tour the college and I really liked it. My mom’s like, if you’re gonna go here, you need to read Harry Potter. Like, you’re going to be so left out of everything. So that summer I was like, alright. And I read one through five. And then..I stopped.
S: You skipped the two best ones, Leah.
L: And I haven’t really seen the movies either.
S: No, I only read the books in high school. Like, that’s when I read them for the first time and I loved it. And it became my favorite. But I watched all the movies before that. I told myself I hated fantasy books, and I realized I love fantasy books. Like I read my sad, realistic fiction books–
L: I’m more of a realistic fiction.
S:–and then sci-fi movies.
L: And rom-coms. We do a lot of rom-coms. We usually do a rom-com a weekend.
That’s incredible. Do you guys have any plans for Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day?
L: Probably a rom-com.
What’s your favorite rom-com, or what’s one that’s on the list for this weekend?
L: Hmm. What did we watch the other night that was a little weird? Oh–
L & S: Easy A.
S: I did not like that.
L: I did not like that one that much. We watch a couple Christmas-y, cheesy ones.
S: I liked To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
Oh that’s a good one.
S: I was like, I relate to this girl; I’m terrified of driving, I romanticize everything in my head and never do anything in real life. I was like, this is me. And then she actually got the guy in the end, and I was like, yes.
L: Yes.
S: I see this future.
That’s funny.
S: What other ones have we even watched?
L: I don’t know. I lose track.
S: Yeah. But we’ve seen so many movies. Because we always go to our friend’s room. Even if she’s not there, I’m always like, we’re having a party in [her] room.
L: She has the softest carpet, so.
S: She does.
L: We all just sit there.
S: And then I have the biggest computer and we all watch a movie on it.
I made a list of all the movies I watched in 2018 and I got through January, and then I just gave up.
L: That’s a good idea because then you can look back.
S: Yeah we watch horrible movies.
L: We also watch Kids Baking Championship together. It’s a really good show.
S: [laughing] We watched it at the Wellness Center on Tuesday.
L: ‘Cause we’re watching the current season, so we have to wait. It comes out on every Monday, so on Tuesday we watch it.
So is it like the Great British Bake Off, but with children.
L: Yeah, sort of. It starts off with like, 10 kids-ish and then each week someone gets eliminated. And we just laugh at all the kids.
S: They’re always super extra. BUt they’re also really sweet. Like if one of them is crying and other people are done, they’ll come and help them even though they’re in a competition.
L: It’s pretty wholesome.
Humans of William & Mary 