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17 SPRING 2024 Neerjah. "I tried to compensate by being overly friendly, which took Adesuwa aback." "I would be like, 'Who is this girl, and why does she keep coming to my room?'" says Adesuwa. But with some clever mediating from Maya, the pairs quickly merged to form a threesome. "I love both of them," says Maya. "I wanted all of us to be friends." The three found common ground in their upbringings. "We all come from immigrant households," says Adesuwa. "And that's one of the things that ties us together." Maya thinks all three being Bonner Scholars helped them to embrace their cultural heritages, even on a predominantly white campus. "In Bonner, there's explicit time to reflect on our identities. It lit the match for the three of us to be open and vulnerable with each other," she says. Soon, the friends were hitting thrift stores together, moving into an apartment in their junior year, cooking Brussels sprouts, and sitting on their living room couch talking for hours. It may have been Maya who pulled them together, but now, the best friends take pride in pulling each other up. "They have created this safe space for me to grow and become better, and I believe I've done that for them as well," says Neerjah. "I feel so privileged to have the friendship that we have," says Adesuwa. "These are the people my kids will refer to as aunties." BILL CARDONI " These are the people my kids will refer to as aunties."

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