We lost to Michigan State on Saturday. It was horrifying. Here
is a list of five random things to think about to distract yourself
from the pain and shame of our Wolverine’s defeat.
3B
Magazine Editor:
Ian DIllingham
Deputy Editor:
Natalie Gadbois
Design Editor:
Jake Wellins
Photo Editor:
Luna Anna Archey
Creative Director:
Cheryll Victuelles
Editor in Chief:
Jennifer Calfas
Managing Editor:
Lev Facher
Copy Editors:
Hannah Bates
Laura Schinagle
Emma Sutherland
THE statement
THE LIST
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
He’s our sexiest Founding Father! (Now with a Broadway
musical set to hip-hop music that’s sweeping the nation.)
GLOBAL WARMING
Why worry about a football game when our children will
inherit a dying planet?
GOATS
It’s a known fact that the best apple orchards have goats.
Why do we love goats so much? Do they possess human
souls?
BUZZFEED, BUT BETTER
DISTRACT YOURSELF
CHEEZ-ITS
So many flavors! So many combinations! How do they get so
cheesy? Why are the edges crimped? Who was lazy enough
to approve that name?
ORIGAMI
So simple, yet so beautiful.
1
3
5
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES
Who am I?
M
y friend once asked me,
“When did you stop get-
ting ice cream in a cone
and instead in a cup?” It was an odd
question, asked at an odd time, and
I didn’t have an answer. Crucial to
this was the fact that we were get-
ting ice cream and I had just gotten
a cone, but, now that I thought of it,
yes, I do often ask for a cup.
The same friend also once asked
me, “When did you stop ordering
soda at restaurants?” I did have an
answer for that. “I think around
senior year,” I replied as I took a sip
from my complimentary water.
They are quite shocking when
noticed, these odd signifiers of
“growing up.” They eat at you, too,
forcing you to question how and
when and why you’ve changed so
much from your younger self.
I always like to think that I was
better before. It makes me feel bet-
ter to tell myself that I was a more
fun person to be around back when
I ordered mint chocolate chip in
a waffle cone. People liked the
Nabeel who ordered a Coke at din-
ner better than the Nabeel who’s
started wearing watches, I say in
my head.
My aunt once told my mother,
when I was a sophomore in high
school, that “Nabeel became so
quiet.” As any concerned mother
would do, she told me this, con-
fronted me on our couch in India
about why I don’t talk that much
anymore. I told her I didn’t know.
I looked over and saw my peren-
nially social sister having a very
lively conversation with a guy who
had just come to visit and whose
name I still wouldn’t be able to tell
you. And thus, I became known as
“the quiet one.”
Inexplicably, I embraced this
new identity. I sped through the
rest of high school as someone who
rarely opened up to people outside
his close-knit group of friends,
the guy who was more prone to
off-brand reticence than the ubiq-
uitous affability of the time. I was
being who I was, but I was also
angry about it. I wished to be like
those guys who could make friends
on a deserted island, dreamed
of having the ability to converse
freely and openly and well and to
whomever I wished, yearned for
the social skills that would never
sprout within me. My father intro-
duced me as the quiet one, my sis-
ter as the talkative one, and my life
went on.
Cut to college, where I now find
myself in a state of limbo. I talk
to my friends from back home
almost daily and see my friends
at Michigan all the time. But I
didn’t change; I stayed grown up.
My personality package didn’t
come equipped with the necessary
skills to join a fraternity, nor did I
feel like I could upgrade myself to
be in one. And what friends I did
make, I made slowly, steadily, like
one hikes up a hill—like one isn’t
“supposed” to do in “college.”
It’s tough to realize you’ve grown
up — tougher still to realize that
the way you are is the way you’re
meant to be. It’s easy to be angry
at something you can’t change, but
this is something we’re always told
we can change. “Reserved” isn’t
a phase, some ephemeral mood
swing that fades away when I grew
up (said my mother to her sister,
says my mother to herself, I knew,
I know); it’s a mark, branded upon
me by the gears of time and neces-
sity and change. I won’t complain.
I never do.
B Y N A B E E L C H O L L A M PAT
2
4
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 // The Statement 3C