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. 

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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

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015 // The Statement 3C

