DEAR READER,

Hi! How’s your day??

I’m supposed to write this about conversation, which is funny because sometimes I think I am most at ease when I am not speaking at all. With Tufts over-enrolling so many students each year, I have routinely felt like our campus is devoid of spaces draped with thick, insulating silence into which to settle in.

Speaking of silence—it’s strange that it is often accompanied by the word “dead.” I find silences to be so alive, so charged—silences hold unspoken intimacy between lovers; silence enables people to listen openly when a perspective may conflict with their own; silence pushes newfound understandings of ourselves and others to ripple to the surface in a way that constant verbal exchange never could.

But, sometimes, stretching silence can make me feel like I’m drowning. As much as I cherish it, when I feel especially lost, I always clasp my fingers around memories of the most notable conversations of my life, ones that remind me I have lived. A highlight— Walking through a deluge with my best friend of the last four years, Sruthi, on the second day of college. We had met hours ago and found ourselves drenched on the way back to Tilton, exchanging runaway thoughts about how water feels like change. Or my first love, making my heart jolt into my throat with a 10-word text: “I think it would be good if we talked soon.” My own father, shaking me by the shoulders months later as heartbreak swallowed up my junior spring: “Priyanka, you have your whole life ahead of you!” Standing on the bench outside of SoGo past midnight with one of my newest friends, looking up at an inky sky and not feeling cold anymore as he said, “Maybe I’ll remember this moment years later?”

It feels fitting to reflect on the culmination of my college experience through the lens of conversation because I wrote about this very topic for the college essay that gained me admission to this school four years prior. My conversations with the people I have grown to love here are threads sewn into the fabric of my soul; I am not the same person I once was, now with more tears, scars, laughs, smiles.

There’s a recurring, humorous conversation I always have with a friend of mine. When I ask him if he’s gone home for the weekend, he contemplates, amused, “am I ever home, Priyanka?” It always sparks laughter, but I’ve ruminated on this one for a while. As I embark on new paths beyond Tufts, I don’t know if I have found what home really means to me yet, but I know that life is a series of conversations that can make me feel at home across borders, as they transcend stages of time. I have experienced my brightest and darkest moments here, and I found the O during the latter. One of my favorite things about this issue in particular is how I feel conversations occur between these pages—more than one person mentions ravens, or rain, or a significant street in their lives. I want to live a gentle life, reading and tasting these authentic confessions on a page—maybe even sharing a tangerine with another as we read citrus poems! (The fruit has seemed to be a popular inspiration for people pondering on love.) No matter who I become, I hope to converse with more than my words, to talk with my hands, to finally own my blushing problem, to look closer. Sure, I struggle to find silence here, but the incessant chatter of Tufts spaces is something that makes me feel whole in its own way. Many here have charmed me. I’ve found myself grasping for conversation when I can’t speak—sending love notes over email, making phone calls, writing letters. I hope these pages spark conversations with your friends and yourselves, as we all stumble down the winding path of growing up. I love talking to so many here, can we keep doing that?

With laughter, my love, and a persistent request to tell me more, priyanka