Harvard’s admitted students weekend, Visitas, was a pretty intimidating time: you were thrown into a huge, unfamiliar place with thousands of people you might never see again and without any place to start building your network.
I was, understandably, scared out of my mind whenever I went into the cavernous dining hall and stood amidst hundreds of incoming freshmen, none of whom I knew. So that was why I’d make a beeline for a table full of Indian people or, at least, one Indian person who looked friendly and had an open seat next to them. That way you’d be guaranteed to have at least one thing in common and they wouldn’t be surprised when you showed up. That strategy was how I met the guy who ended up becoming my best friend in college.
We went to a reception for all the Mid-Atlantic students and soon headed back to the dining hall with some new faces in tow. As we stood outside the serving line we realized that every one of those faces were brown. “We always end up surrounded by Indians,” my best-friend-to-be and I joked.
That night I went to an event at one of the upperclassman houses. I was walking with this white guy and, as I got close to the house, ran into a vaguely Indian-looking girl who was walking with a cadre of white girls. She and I peeled away and started talking about our shared love for Bollywood movies. That’s how I ran into another of my best friends.
The only other good friend I made at Visitas is Chinese. I met her when we accidentally ran into each other at a science symposium and started talking about our interest in computer science and government until all the presenters took their boards down and kicked us out. Good thing we had that random run-in because otherwise I’d never have been inclined to pick her out of a crowd.
