Car rides to Malibu

Strawberry ice cream

One spoon for two

And trading jackets

Laughing ’bout how small it looks on you…

Olivia Rodrigo put out her ballad-filled album “SOUR” during the spring of my first year of college. For my freshly 19-year-old self, who had every last drop of energy squeezed and wrung out of her from the on-going strangeness of Zoom school and devastation from the pandemic, its tracklist actually made me actually feel something. It permanently altered my brain chemistry, for lack of a better phrase.

Rodrigo’s first album is a nostalgic one for me. In a parasocial way, I’ll gladly claim it as mine (It was released the day before my birthday, during Gemini season). Hearing the jingle of the intro of the song “deja vu” and the way Rodrigo sweetly drags out the words “strawberry” and “jackets” transports me back to when I first heard it in my double-converted-to-single in Stern. I was still being freshly acquainted with Stanford’s campus, having moved in less than a week prior. It quickly became a staple in my “Come of Age With Me” playlist. With the power of inner “teenage girlhood,” I can still belt all the lyrics by heart, and hearing one of her songs from this era makes me feel young again. (I am still very young.)

This time three years ago, I finally was living in Burbank, met many upperclassmen that I still look up to and consider my friends and gained some sense of community among some of the ITALIC cohort. Spring was followed by the strangest summer ever. Frosh and sophomores — who were either pursuing a Stanford-arranged opportunity or using their flex quarter — were allowed to live on campus. 

Many in the Class of 2024 were having semi-normal college experiences for the first time that summer, with a thousand undergraduate students filling up the halls of Ng, EVGR-A and Wilbur. Frosh year was crammed into three months. It was a summer when Ng was basically a frat house, parties were held outside in Casper Quad, surrounding and on top of picnic benches — half of the crowd discernibly drunk and dancing to “Party in the USA” while everyone else crammed in awkward networking circles — and the now widely-used app Fizz, then “Buzz,” was born. (I have a vivid memory of a flyer being sent to a GroupMe, advertising the app by promising the address for a party.) I wouldn’t enter an actual classroom until that fall, but I had the pleasure of walking past Arguello field and hearing the upbeat songs of “SOUR” being bumped on a speaker while a beach volleyball match ensued. It was a time.

It is also a time that produces a lot of nostalgia. Calling anything under a decade old nostalgic feels inappropriate, but I would not be lying when I said that my current world is entirely different from then. Different friends, personality and mental place. Different hair, weight and face. Different clothes in my closet and different decorations on my wall. Now, I can actually cook, my writing has improved with the help of a creative honors thesis, I have finally lived out-of-state and I have actual opinions on actual things that actually matter. The list is endless.

Let there be no confusion. Do I yearn for that time? Hell no. But am I excited for a post-grad life, where my path beyond this summer is, for the first time in my life, unknown? Not exactly. It’s a mixed-bag of emotion, where I feel I can no longer grow on this campus yet feel the security of suburbia and wealth slowly drifting away from me, a FLI student. Nonetheless, I am happy with the person I have grown into, especially since the 19-year-old version of me was dealing with every problem under the sun and constantly felt as if her brain was enduring nuclear warfare. (There needs to be a study done on the 19-year-old brain.)

Even things that have lasted into now — such as my major or the butterfly poster on my wall or the fact that I am still obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo or the fact I am still writing for The Daily — have still changed. The butterfly poster has wrinkles. I have only written two other Daily articles this year when I used to produce one seemingly out of thin air every other week. Olivia Rodrigo is joined by other artists in my monthly playlists. The old things always seem to appear in the new. The sense of new, though, always persists.

In this time of reflection, the images of the past and present and new are constantly converging as I walk around campus. A 22-year-old Kyla is heading to her last classes of her senior year, and while biking down Arguello she sees her 18-year-old self chase after a volleyball that trailed out from the sand pit. She hooks left on Escondido. A few seconds later, she sees her 19-year-old self on Meyer Green, trying to learn guitar and transform into the “indie rocker girl” she gave up on when she sold the guitar. Past “The Churro” and Law School, she sees her 20-year-old self outside of the Nitery, heading over to rehearse the third show of her junior year. She makes a loop around the circle of death, careful to not cause any death. She sees her 21-year-old self notice one of her best friends, one of the many people who have made Stanford bearable. They exchange smiles and waves. 

Finally, when she reaches the middle of Main Quad and sees the same mural painted on MemChu for the millionth time, and takes the same path toward Margaret Jacks — where the brick floor of the plaza and smooth pavement under the arches meet at an even level — and parks in the same square of bike racks, where the sun manages to peek in through the leaves, she thinks to herself, “Wow, this feels familiar.” And then she moves along, onto the next thing.