Stanford’s Big Game win today (whoo hoo! I briefly cared about football, long enough to text a quick gloat to my dad at least) reminds me to be grateful for my entire Stanford experience. In particular, I am grateful for the friends I made there, who are still dear to me and to each other years, advanced degrees, marriages, kids, new jobs and cross-country moves later. i am grateful to Dave, for being the only nice person I met at ProFro weekend, and for convincing me to go to Stanford in the first place, even as i tried to talk him into picking MIT over Stanford. i am grateful to Valerie, for inviting me to eat dinner with her on our first day of freshman year when i was too paralyzed with shyness to even enter the dining hall on my own, to Lauren for asking to join our draw group and for that time we tried to raise baby chickens she smuggled out of a lab in our dorm room, to Joe for marrying Lauren in the backyard of our Oxford house, to Grant for allowing us to spend half of sophomore year plotting to set him up with Valerie, or at least letting us think that it was our idea, to Mari for, omg, just being YOU, to Paul for mailing cans of salsa to us in Oxford and for that time that his band dedicated REM’s Easter Bunny to me. i love you guys.