Please read till the end, especially ProFros.

Hi/hey/wassup everyone!

Firstly, I know this is super, super late! There are only three full months before school starts! My name is Profrina! I’m from XXX but I’m so excited to be coming to California! Now I will briefly discuss why I’m so excited for Stanford’s paradise weather in hopes that this will quickly establish me as a relatable and optimistic person, although this tells you nothing besides my ability to acknowledge temperate climate!

I’m so excited to meet all of y’all! In fact, I’m my heart is racing just typing out this introduction, but then again that might be my highkey anxiety about the fact that I have to start afresh in a totally new place where I know none of my inanely-accomplished peers. I have no clue how I’ll interact with y’all but, ideally, this bubbly Facebook intro will mask all that. I spent nearly two hours crafting this paragraph, hoping it’ll strike the balance between suavely earnest and teenybopper hyperactive. Did I use too many exclamation marks?!

I guess now would be a good time to mention that some of my pastimes are to watch Popular and Mainstream TV Shows A, B, and C. I hope our mutual appreciation of television — which I never really watched till this  spring because, well, I had to get into this school — will be the first step to a friendship that will transcend space and time. As a backup, I’ll mention some semi-niche TV shows here, but not to the point where it becomes too revelatory of my weird or pretentious inner-mind. The same goes for my systematically diverse music taste: I’m trying to strike a balance between accessible and basic.

You made it this far — thank goodness! Hopefully, I’m remotely compelling, but my ideal would be to elicit a comment from you, so let me try my luck by elucidating my academic interests. I’m a techie and/or fuzzie. I know the labels are kind of lame, but hopefully my fluency in Stanford vernacular suggests that hanging out with me will keep you hip and in-the-loop. Academically, I’m interested in several many things, almost anything, really. From CS to Anthropology to Economics to C$. For now I guess I’ll list a few different potential majors and justify these choices with some quirky trivia, like ‘Did you know Vladimir Lenin died 75 years after my birthday?’ The implication is that I’m nerdy but also quirky.

At this point, I’d like to elaborate on my academic interests in a more technical fashion because using polysyllabic science words or citing Marxist-Leninist literature might convince you that I do, in fact, belong here (a fact I’m not entirely convinced of yet and therefore seeking external affirmation upon). However, I weighed the consequences of getting geeking-out on this platform and decided against it. I need to be a little vague to solicit appeal: Can’t go around alienating my potential bestie. Also, I just want to be your friend, not your comrade! LOL.

Now I should list my interests so as to convey my well-roundedness, and, implicitly, to imply to you of my ability to run with the big dogs like yourselves. Now would be a good time to either somehow euphemize the fact that I own three companies or call myself a frequenter of science fairs. A simple Google search, which might be performed in hopes of adding me on LinkedIn, should unearth the fact that I also wrote a book and did, in fact and not ironically, cure a strain of cancer. Also, I like to shoot hoops and travel to ‘SanFran’, so maybe we could make a group chat for that? Who knows, maybe it won’t fizzle out like the other 537 group chats that our class has borne.

SOOO excited to meet you all soon even though the very thought of you and all the socialization that awaits exhausts me. Go Cardinal!!! <25 emojis here.>

P.S. Attached are some pics that show me being cute and fab.

P.P.S. If we’re all sharing these stories, then I guess I’ll just say I opened my acceptance letter while I was performing open heart surgery. And, boy, did I scream and cry! I was SO happy. For your viewing pleasure, I re-enacted my reaction on this Youtube video that also, conveniently, shows that I got into Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Penn, Deep Springs College, Cambridge, Duke and my safety school UC Berkeley.

Dear ProFros who made it to the end of this satirical self-commentary,

Yes, you read correctly, this is a self-commentary that humorizes just a bit of the lowkey anguish I went through when introducing myself on the 2021 Facebook group just over a year ago. The above satire is entirely reflective of my experience, filled with nerves and overwhelming joy, when I first interacted with my future classmates. This was my fresh start at the best school in the world, and I wanted to do it right. However, it’s been a year and the fact that I’m able to satirize my cringe-worthy introduction testifies, foremostly, to one thing: worrying about what people at Stanford will think about you is pretty much unnecessary. Given the wonderful friends and family I’ve found here, my nerves seem silly, in retrospect.

See, I never understood the Facebook-active faction of my class—in fact, I was a bit apprehensive of them. I was worried I was falling behind on the college social scheme. But now, being more or less well-adjusted, I can tell you that no matter whether you lurk quietly on the Facebook group, like me, or post more than the administrators, you will find your people here. Hopefully, Admit Weekend gave you a taste of this magical, but certainly flawed, school—a school perfect for our magical—but certainly flawed—selves. So, to close, I want to say, I hope you chose Stanford. In the language of social media: Come thru, fam.  

Contact Megha Parwani at mparwani ‘at’ stanford.edu.