“I felt like you were my breath of fresh air.”

That’s not a compliment you get everyday. I sat on my bed, tears streaming down my face, staring at the friend who has not only played a huge role in helping me to define who I am, but what I believe. Funny thing is, we only met seven months ago. When I met her I didn’t need her and she didn’t need me–we both already had our (according to Cosmo) “perfect number” of 5-8 best friends. When we met, we were both content in our own comfortable yet separate social circles.

Funnier thing is, seven months later I don’t know how I ever lived without her.

A few weeks ago, the incoming Class Presidents had a meeting with Leslie Winick, the Director of Alumni & Student Class Outreach at the Alumni Association. As Leslie described some of her past experience surveying alums, one point she made really struck a chord: “No matter how old they are, whether they were in the Class of 1955 or the Class of ’93, the number one regret alumni have about their time at Stanford is that they wished they had known more people outside of their social circle.”

At the beginning, our class and our social circle were almost synonymous. Our class community was solidified at NSO the first second Dean Julie yelled “OH’LEVEN!” and every single member of the Class of 2011 responded. It was a call to action, our verbal affirmation that cemented our membership into the Class of 2011 for the rest of our lives, starting at that moment and continuing past our 65-year reunion.

But almost the nanosecond after we signed that verbal affirmation with Dean Julie, the Darwinian ladder-climbers in all of us were struggling to define ourselves within a smaller subset of our class of superstars. Our second community was as fundamentally basic as our geographical location: Freshman Dorms. The second we finished screaming “OH-LEVEN” our vocal chords were already contracting for the next phase, screaming “J-RO!” even louder. The freshman dorm was the first opportunity we had to define ourselves within a smaller community, thus making ourselves more distinctive in an auditorium full of valedictorians.

But then NSO ended (thank God), real life started, and before you knew it you were no longer living in your freshman dorm. You then began to define yourself by more specific and thus more descriptive variables–this could have been a major, favorite branch of the ASSU or sorority stereotype. At first glance, membership in a community that more accurately expresses your individual interests is one of the greatest ways to express your individuality. But almost counter-intuitively, the second you started to identify yourself within this smaller community based on variables more specific than geographical location or class year alone, a part of your individual identity was lost to the larger group identity. As each year progressed, these more specific communities and social groups became more and more solidified, making it harder and harder for new people to break in.

But these solidified communities also make it even harder to break out.

Perhaps the funniest thing about my new-found friendship seven months ago is that neither of us knew we wanted to break out until Stanford forced our communities together (the luck of the Draw placed us in the same homestay in Spain). It’s funny how those things happen. Just like the freshman dorm, it was once again a determinate of our geographical location that forced us to break out of our solidified communities and into someone else’s heart.

Your class is your very first community, as well as your very last. As much as class unity steadily decreases year after year, class unity arguably increases in importance year after year. When you sit through graduation, how many faces are you going to actually know? How many faces do you want to know? That’s a question only you can answer. But as much as you think you may have already found the best friends and the best community in the world, it is never too late to find that new individual who actually makes you a better person.

In my case seven months ago, my breath of fresh air was Stephanie Caro.

Molly is an incoming Senior Class President and therefore forced by the larger ASSU community to write this column. JOKE! Or is it? Find out at [email protected] .