Meredith Sopher '14

Ephpreciation

Meredith Sopher '14Hi! My name is Meredith Sopher and I’m a member of the Class of 2014 at Williams. Thank you for your gift to the Alumni Fund. I know that without alumni support many of the opportunities that make this college so exceptional wouldn’t be available. In addition to saying thank you, let me share with you a little about myself and my Williams experiences.

I chose Williams in part because my dad is an alumnus and constantly waxes rhapsodic about his time here. Most of his closest friends are people he met during his first year of college. “Just wait until you get to Williams and start making friends!” my dad told me after I received my acceptance. Now that I’m an Eph, I can honestly say that my friends play a tremendous role in making my Williams experience the best ever.

I met my friend Lucy when we were assigned to do an Environmental Studies project together. We admitted to each other that we had never liked group projects very much. But this was different. Lucy and I discovered that we were both pretty interested in our topic and wanted to do a good job. Night after night, we spread out our papers on a couch in the Paresky Center and drank tea while we went over what we’d done so far and what we wanted to accomplish next. We decided to slip surreptitious (and irrelevant) pictures of wolves into our PowerPoint because we knew that our professor was a big fan of protecting wolves. If he asked about the photos, we’d pretend that it was an accident. From going over our presentation notes and laughing over wolf pictures, Lucy and I got to know each other very well. And our professor loved our project!

Audrey and Olivia I met when I joined the club Koreans of Williams (KoW). No, I’m not Korean, but I had a lot of Korean friends in high school and have taught myself some Korean. KoW was very welcoming to me and the rest of its freshmen; each of us was assigned a “big sib” within the club to get to know us and look after us. Olivia and I are Audrey’s little sibs. I’ve loved getting to know them during the club’s weekly meetings. Audrey and Olivia and I, along with six other students in KoW, are working on a dance to a Korean pop song that we will perform at a special dinner organized by Asian American Students in Action (AASiA).

My friend Chris runs cross-country as I do. During the season, we walk to practice together. Williams is simply a wonderful place to run. We have lovely nature trails behind the Clark Art Institute and in Hopkins Forest. With the blue sky arching above me and the purple hills rolling out before me, I feel like I could run forever. Chris is someone to whom I can gush when I feel completely in love with running, because he shares my passion for the sport. He’s also great to talk to about other things—sitting on the floor of his dorm room or mine, we have excellent late-night conversations about school, family, and life in general.

I hope that I will stay in touch with my Williams friends throughout my life, like my dad has with his. My fellow Ephs are like family to me. Thank you for making my Williams experience possible!

Sincerely yours,

 

Meredith Sopher ’14