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College Stories

BreckenSerendipity
by Brecken Branstrator ’10

In and out of our lives within about a month. She was in one of my classes senior year of high school, and I met her briefly during some lunch periods. But once she moved back to Kentucky, I never really expected to see her again, just as she wasn’t expecting to see anyone from our high school, let alone them recognizing her if she did.

But looking back at it now, it’s almost as if we were meant to meet up with Amy again. My roommate kept running into her randomly around campus. It started the first week of school our freshman year at UNC, when they happened to see each other on north campus and ended up having lunch together. Then a few weeks later, unplanned and unexpected, both our group of friends and Amy’s group of friends decided to take advantage of the free movie playing at the Student Union.

That weekend, it happened to be The Hills Have Eyes – which makes so much sense to us all now that that’s where we would meet up. My roommate Diana and Amy both share a certain love for weird and disturbing movies. Amy’s friends were too grossed out and terrified by the movie, so they left and Amy joined us. We grabbed a bite to eat on Franklin afterward, but then lost touch as our first year of college really got going.

Fast forward a year. We had just moved into Avery residence hall. Ram Village was really where we wanted to be, but because it’s so popular, there was no chance of us getting in as sophomores, which meant one more year in the dorms for us. But this turned out to be the start of a real friendship with Amy, and it was at this point we decided we were all meant to be friends.

Diana was on her way to class from Avery, and Amy was walking home to Teague (only two buildings away). After the two girls briefly caught up, Amy decided to try to recruit us for Parker Community Government. She was governor and really needed people to help her out. Later that day I got a call from Diana asking me if I would go with her to the meeting that night. We wanted to get involved and meet new people in our buildings, so we were only too happy to oblige.

It started out with weekly meetings, but while we were there we realized we had so much fun with her that we wanted to hang out with her more often. She was hilarious and had a sense of humor that went with ours perfectly. Her sense of fun led us to a lot of adventures, planned and unplanned, big and little, on campus and off campus. She was committed to her role of governor and wanted to bring great activities to our community. Planning and executing many of those events were some of the best times we’ve all had together, including an event for residents to paint on canvases that eventually turned into an all-out paint war.

So, the weekly meetings soon turned into hanging out with Amy and her suitemates, which further turned into Amy becoming one of our closest friends at UNC. Most of our closest friends here we actually met through her. It’s still a topic that comes up a lot, how weird and serendipitous it was that Diana and Amy kept running into each other and that we would eventually form an amazing friendship. For that month she was at our high school, we didn’t know what would happen at UNC a few years later. All we can think now is how different our lives would be if it wasn’t for that one brief month we have in common and those chance encounters on campus.

Brecken Branstrator ’10, from Greensboro, majored in Journalism and Mass Communication. She hopes to work for a women’s lifestyle magazine.