One of my dearest friends, Andrea Benin, sent me this shirt during our first year of college. I've known Andrea since third grade when she came up to me during "let's rearrange our desks" day and asked if I wanted to sit next to her. I don't know what prompted her to seek me out, but I'll be forever glad that she did. We were great friends from that day on and survived together through a plethora of dioramas, creative projects on the American Revolution, birthday parties, the traumas of adolescence, learning French, algebra, AP U.S. History, AP English, AP Biology, and, finally, college applications and high school graduation. While she was at Dartmouth she drove down to Wellesley to visit me a couple times, once with a rather dramatic incident that involved her car being towed, and another time that involved an early morning, speed record breaking drive back to New Hampshire for a sailing competition. Andrea is an M.D. now and, after medical school at Tufts, she returned to New Hampshire to the Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital for a residency in pediatrics. She's now in Atlanta working for the CDC. One day in the future I know I'm going to call her and ask for medical advice about my kids. Hopefully for her, it won't be the middle of the night.

This t-shirt was the most comfortable one I had during college. It was my favorite study shirt, and "gotta pull an all-nighter" shirt. I often wore it under my Wellesley sweatshirt, privately savoring the irony of the "old boys network" school being covered up by my women's college. Andrea once told me that the feminists at Dartmouth are a lot more extreme than those at Wellesley. I thought to myself, well, they probably have to be. It must be difficult going against years of tradition that excluded women from education and may still exist, at least in subtle ways. The lack of male students at Wellesley makes the feminism less of a fight on campus, and more of a student bonding experience. But all collegiate differences aside, to me this shirt was a comfortable friend, representing a wonderful friend. The neck is now frayed and the letters are wearing off. If I had it again as it was when it was new, I would still be wearing it regularly.
 

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