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She’s the friend you cried with after a bombed test, a bad breakup, or the death of a family member.

They’re the friend who calms you down when you’re about to crack and assures you—in the midst of a pandemic that’s disrupted your world—that you’re going to be okay.

As college ends for �ʼһ���’s Class of 2020, we asked 20 such friends to share their stories.

Carter Cook and Caroline Roy

Carter Cook and Caroline Roy spent their first hours as freshman roommates sobbing.

Carter had just said goodbye to her family and walked into the dorm room crying. She found Caroline sitting alone, crying.

Each has a younger brother, and the toughest part about the family goodbye was seeing them cry. Back in the dorm room, the two new roommates hugged and cried some more.

They became each other’s first best college friend.

“She was the best possible person I could have been matched with,” Caroline said. “Carter is one of the most outgoing and welcoming people I’ve ever met. She’d encourage me to go different social events—much more than I would have on my own.

“It was always so nice, after being around other people and doing other things all day to have that one person and that safe space to debrief and talk,” Caroline said. “We have always been honest and vulnerable with each other.”

Carter is a political science major and data science minor from Jacksonville, Florida. She ran the �ʼһ��� Daily student Instagram page as a Senior Admissions Fellow.

Caroline is an English major from Black Mountain, North Carolina, and was an editor for the �ʼһ���ian student newspaper.

“�ʼһ��� fosters a lot of friendships across the campus and you have a lot of people you can rely on,” Carter said. “Caroline has a similar sense of humor. We make each other laugh a lot. “She’s also somebody I can talk seriously to. I feel like I can tell her anything.”

Even when they weren’t roommates, they’d get together often.

“It was easy to run into Carter on campus and end up walking around talking for the next few hours together,” Caroline said. “I will miss that, but I know we will always be in touch.”

“In hindsight we did so much stupid stuff,” Matt said. “We’d put in so many hours in the batting cages when it was so cold outside—we’d have homework to do that we wouldn’t get started on until midnight. And it didn’t get us any better.”

(Both had standout tenures at �ʼһ��� on a team that went 13-3 this year before the pandemic stopped the season. They defeated 10th-ranked Duke University 7-6 in their last game. Zach hit two doubles, and Matt hit a run in with a single.)

But back to friendship.

Matt says he admires Zach’s honesty, loyalty and humor.

“Zach doesn’t screw around, he doesn’t mince words,” Matt said. “He’s always straight-forward, there’s never any secret about how he feels.”

And Zach will always play along when Matt comes up with hypothetical ideas such as: “What if we had to make a team of everyone in this economics class—what’s your starting lineup?”

Zach says he appreciates Matt’s empathy and willingness to give everyone a chance.

“The biggest thing about Matt is his patience with other people and his ability to understand their situations,” Zach said. “He finds a way to like people—no matter what his past experience has been with them.”

Their families now know each other and Matt visited Zach’s in Seattle over winter break.

“Matt would sit there with my grandmother doing puzzles for hours,” Zach said. “She loved having someone new to entertain her—she gets sick of me.”

Mia Gogel and Courtney Welch

Mia Gogel has a Halloween habit, and Courtney Welch enables her.

The two dressed up one year as American Gothic, frame and all. Another time they were Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy from the Sponge Bob Square Pants cartoon.

Graduation robes turned them into Harry and Ron from the Harry Potter series. And they portrayed the Vanilla Ice song “Ice Ice Baby,” with Mia dressed as a baby and Courtney and another friend as ice cubes.

Mia comes up with the ideas, and Courtney offers crucial backup.

“Whenever I’m enthusiastic about something Courtney will get right on board and say, ‘Ok, let’s do it!,’” Mia said. “She gets as enthusiastic as I am.”

They lived next door to each other their first year. The two, and their roommates, became close.

Courtney, a political science major, grew up in England. Her family moved back to New Jersey just before the pandemic hit Europe. She’s considering a law career.

Mia is an environmental science major from Baltimore. She’s looking at a career in sustainable landscape design and wants to work for a non-profit.

“What I like best about Mia is her light-heartedness,” Courtney said. “She’s very silly and can always joke around, but has an awesome ability to listen. She’s someone who will fight for your causes.”

This past year, the two co-chaired the college’s Women’s Leadership Conference that was scheduled in April but cancelled because of the pandemic.

“Doing something of that magnitude could have been the test of our friendship, but it ended up making it even stronger,” Courtney said.

They lived in the same hall, and later apartment building, all through college.

“It’s always nice to have your best friend around when something really exciting happens and you can’t wait to tell her, or if you’ve had a bad day and come home upset,” Mia said.

“Courtney’s one of those people you can sit and talk to for a really long time, or sit in silence with for hours. She’s a really caring person, she remembers to ask how your test went, or how your paper’s going.

“And best of all, she listens to my ridiculous humor, and humors me.”

“They looked at me, like ‘that’s so cute,’” he said.

In eighth grade, the prestigious Virginia boarding school offered both boys scholarships.

“I knew I wanted to go, but then Jose was hesitant,” Roy said. “I told him, ‘This would be so good for us.’”

Jose knew it was a rare opportunity.

“I was just nervous about leaving home, and it was so different from anything I’d ever experienced,” he said. “Here we were, in this rich, preppy Southern school—we were definitely in the minority."

“We didn’t have a lot of things that the other kids did, but it turned out to be this great experience.”

The high school roommates never lived together at �ʼһ��� and made friends in their dorms, in classes and other activities. Sometimes they’d go weeks without seeing each other.

“But whenever life really tested me or I was having a crisis, I’d go to Roy,” Jose said.

They consoled each other after each lost a family member.

“He’s someone I completely trust. He’s smart, he’s kind, he’s caring and he’s got a great sense humor,” Roy said. “We can spend all night talking and listening to music. He’s not just my best friend, I also consider him to be a brother.”

Roy, who is also a Terry Fellow, recently received a Watson Fellowship to research abroad for a year, will postpone overseas travel until pandemic restrictions ease.

Until then, he’ll work as a research assistant at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. He hopes to persuade Jose, who’s considering a career as an Emergency Medical Technician, to move to Atlanta, too.

Kayla Edwards and Adde Sharp

Kayla Edwards and Adde Sharp didn’t know each other before becoming randomly assigned roommates at �ʼһ���’s Sustainability Co-Op House.

Kayla, a political science major, grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Adde, an outdoorsy environmental sciences major, comes from the mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado.

A few mutual friends said their second-year pairing might not work. And their first meeting, over coffee at the Summit outpost, felt stilted.

But when they moved in with eight others to the house, they ended up becoming best friends.

Different? Yes.

“She’s definitely more social than I am and was good about dragging me out to different events,” Adde said.

Incompatible? No.

“We have some superficial differences, but we’ve discovered a lot of ways in which we’re very similar,” Kayla said. “We can both be very intense, we like to dig deep into issues.”

Take sustainability.

Adde initially viewed it as protecting the environment. Kayla saw it as a social justice issue—with lower income black and brown communities often saddled by harmful environmental practices. 

Adde, a Terry Fellow, served as chair of the Honor Council and ran volunteer programs at the �ʼһ��� Farm.

Kayla, a Belk Scholar, worked on the �ʼһ���ian staff, raising questions about some of �ʼһ���’s deep-rooted traditions in a changing society.

“Kayla loves to ask provocative questions, to really make people think,” Adde said. “That’s taught me how to ask better questions and see things in a different perspective.”

They have a mix of separate and shared friend groups. Both minored in Hispanic studies, so some of their classes overlapped. 

In one key difference, Adde jokes that, “I love to cook, and Kayla loves to take pictures of the food I cook.”

Kayla says she’s tried to replicate some of Adde’s recipes, but it’s not the same.

“Adde makes this amazing Thai butternut squash soup,” Kayla said. “She bakes for people on their birthdays. I was in a play, ‘The Cake’ and afterward she invited friends over for cake to celebrate.” 

Adde and Kayla will start �ʼһ��� Impact Fellowships in fall. Adde will work for the Catawba Land Conservancy; Kayla at the Urban Ministry Center in Charlotte.

“At the beginning, neither one of us knew what we were getting into,” Kayla said. “Now we’re able to talk in a way that’s so open and honest. We’ve established such a high level of trust.”

Niara Webb and Zoe Hall

Niara Webb still doesn’t keep up with the Kardashians.

But her friendship with Zoe Hall has brought out a far less serious side to the formerly pop-culture shunning Niara.

Niara, a Terry Scholar, was a high school senior at a small North Carolina boarding school when she learned Zoe would be her �ʼһ��� roommate. Zoe attended a big public high school in Annapolis, Maryland, went to parties and loved campy television.

“I started stalking her on Facebook to see what she was like,” Niara said. “And I see she’s created and posted a poster of the Kardashian family tree. While I was studying new wave French cinema, she was studying the Kardashians.”

They both crack up laughing.

“I remember during one of our first conversations asking her what her favorite music was,” Zoe said. “She said, ‘I don’t listen to music.’ And I thought, ‘Oh no.’”

And they laugh again, and again.

Somewhere between the 700 Commons quesadillas they ate that first year, the late-night conversations and the pre-final room rearrangement, Niara and Zoe became best friends. They lived together all four years.

“Zoe’s always there, Zoe’s always consistent,” Niara said. “There’s no one who’s more bright or fun or entertaining. We’re never out of sync, there a symbiosis.

“There’s also a very serious side to Zoe. She’s very intelligent and very insightful. She has this ineffable quality of being able to be with people and quickly get to what’s important.”

The two sociology majors talk a lot about why modern society is so polarized along racial, economic and political lines. They’ve learned to say “disappointed, not surprised” when they read about a guy in California using a Ku Klux Klan hat as a face mask.

They appreciate the honest treatment they get from each other.

 “She reads me really well,” Zoe said. “We can have a blast together and continue the joke for hours. And she also knows when I want to be alone or need a hug.

“She knows when to be nice, and knows when to say, ‘You are kind of being a mess—you need to get yourself together.’ A lot of people in my life aren’t blunt with me. She’s blunt with me.”

They also know when to compromise.

Since starting college Niara has binge watched “New Girl,” “Glee,” and “Friends” with Hall. But she’s still not budging on the Kardashians.