Today I am very grateful for a person, and one that I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now. College has given me a number of things in the first semester, more than just an education and a fresh start at being an adult. The biggest present that I have been gifted in college is my roommate, who is conveniently named Maddie.

I first met Maddie at orientation over the summer, and it was like meeting a date on the internet (which happens to be how we found each other coincidentally). We quickly established a bond over our countless similarities, which have become rather too much of a coincidence if you ask me… someone has some explaining to do, because we may be experiencing a Lindsay Lohan “Parent Trap” kind of situation here.

For example, Maddie and I have the same name. We both wear glasses. We have similar hair colors and style. We both have the same nose piercing, and wear three Pandora rings on our fingers. We both have a similar taste in clothes, and more than once have accidentally worn the same thing. We each have three tattoos, two on our wrist and one on our foot. We both have long-distance boyfriends who live in Missouri. We both have a shopping problem. We both have two younger siblings (her sisters, my brothers). We share the same taste in literature, and music (she forced me to listen to so much Taylor Swift that I actually started to enjoy it).

Thankfully as proof that we aren’t sisters, long lost twins, or robots, we have our differences. Maddie loves meat, in particular, hamburgers. I have been both a vegan and vegetarian frequently throughout my life. She hates chocolate. All I ever want to eat is chocolate.  Maddie has this weird obsession with slime (yes, like the sticky goo little kids play with..) I on the other hand, have normal teenage girl obsessions. She likes to watch movies that make her cry. I prefer animated children’s movies and comedies. She stays up late, and sleeps through nearly every alarm. I can’t keep my eyes open past 10:30 and wake up before 7 am each day.

But it’s not these similarities or differences that brought us together, it’s the fact that we were both equally confused, terrified, and away from home for the first times in our life.

Both being the oldest in our households, this was a major life change, and she is even farther from her Illinois home than I am. It became obvious that in order to make it through the horrors of the first month of college, we would have to stick together.

And now, almost 500 miles away from her over Christmas break and four months later, I can’t stop thinking about our inside jokes, our late nights of laughter/gossip sessions, and the memories of all the trouble we caused over our first semester together.

I am grateful for the way the Universe spins so specifically that two long-lost twin sisters (or identical robots) from Illinois and Nebraska can end up sharing a dorm in Kansas, and crossing paths to form an alliance so strong that if you mess with one Maddie, you get two to deal with.

Wholeheartedly,

Maddie