Dear Maryam

As I listened to Mahler's Ninth Symphony swinging from delirious joys to aching lows, I heard echoes of the past four years run through my head, in my own shallow way. There it all was, in a one-hour, 45-minute symphony: the hard work, the fun, the games, the messy first relationships and the awful breakups, the new relationships, the bad grades and the good ones, the thesis topics and the carrel visits... It could go on forever and sound as cliched as it does right now.

I wondered what Julia and Brian would do when they put their instruments down. Then I wondered what Brendan and I, sitting in the audience, would do with ourselves. I knew that the four of us would be in four different states a year from now, but somehow in this hour, I couldn't bring myself to admit that we would probably be doing whatever the hell we'd signed up to do post-graduation.

Nevertheless, in the seconds after the applause ended and the last of the Stuart B. Mindlin Concerts of 2007-08 was over, Brendan and I knew exactly what to do. We ran all the way down to the stage. We smiled, we congratulated, and we took pictures.

We looked ridiculous as we celebrated four years of steady-heady-up-and-down-out-and-about friendship.

- Maryam Khan