We are a little over a month into the semester and, to be honest, I’m still combatting the senior slump. There are days where fatigue overtakes me and, overwhelmed by all the work I have to do, I wish I could just sleep and wake up at graduation.
Sometimes, perhaps cynically, I think to myself that I’ve seen all that Claremont has to offer. But there are also times when the sweetness of life here surprises me, reminding me to cherish this final year that I have left.
One of these moments happened a few weeks ago as two of my friends and I prepared to build a charcuterie board for the first Tuesday night dinner gathering of our club, First Love, a 5C religious club for “students who follow Jesus and love the campuses.”
We had planned to build the board before people started arriving at our meeting spot in the Scripps Student Union. We didn’t realize how inexperienced we were at assembling charcuterie until we started trying (“We” had also made a charcuterie board for our dinner kickoff last year, but it was really Eliana Yi PO ’24 who took charge that time).
We took out fruit, cheese and boxes of crackers from our shopping bags, but then stared at the ingredients mindlessly, laughing at our own charcuterie ignorance. By the time people started showing up, we still had nothing on the board. But this empty platter surprisingly became the perfect springboard for conversations, teamwork and laughter between new friends.
The three of us ended up assembling the charcuterie board together with six others who came; as the board came together, I saw new friendships start to come together too.
We laughed together at my less-than-stellar initial placement of the Port Salut cheese and the way too many pumpkin crackers that initially took up one-third of the board. One friend sweetly shaped a handful of freeze-dried strawberries into a heart – “for First Love!” she said.
“But this empty charcuterie board ended up being the perfect springboard for conversations”
We laughed even harder when we decided to put brownie bites on the board and ended up eating them all over the course of the night. My friends and I had bought the brownie bites specifically because it was our friend’s birthday and we had promised that we would save some for her. We didn’t.
This experience of making the charcuterie board — with friends old and new — was a perhaps silly but sweet reminder that even in senior year, new and absolutely wonderful friendships can form. It rejuvenated me and made me look forward to our Tuesday dinners this semester, a much-needed excitement after many days of thesis and grad school stress-induced malaise.
Senior year is already hard and, to reference my first article of the semester, sometimes I still feel soupy and sad. But I am grateful that even in the slump, I can build boards of fruit and cheese and crackers galore with people who care for me. I’m grateful that Claremont has provided me with the opportunity to eat and laugh with these people every night. That is truly something to savor.
And who knows, maybe charcuterie-board-building will become a tradition of this semester’s First Love Tuesday nights. According to Rachel, who missed her birthday charcuterie that day, another charcuterie board Tuesday is in order. Next time, we won’t eat all of her brownie bites (or will we?).
Emily Kim PO ’25 is from Irvine, California. This semester, she spends her evenings 1) snacking on Trader Joe’s Takis and 2) racking her brain over what the heck is going on in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
Facebook Comments