“Asking Stanford” is a series that collects bite-sized stories from students to highlight the diversity of experiences and perspectives on campus.

Who or what was your first love?

In my arms I hold Monkey Moo, my stuffed monkey dressed in a miniature Michigan State football jersey. He and I wait for a long time before we see Mom’s Ford explorer pull up next to us. We think about all of the things we did together that week, like go to the library to read or play Mouse Trap with Dad or cry and cry again for missing Mom. We think about all that awaits us when we arrive, later, at Mom’s pink house. Lunchables and a canopy bed and a bathroom with gold accents. I don’t care much about the gold accents, but they are something that only Mom and I know about. I don’t have to share them with anyone else. They are equally mine as they are hers. Monkey Moo, though, is all mine. And I care about him very much. He is my little stuffed monkey who loves football and State green and being told that he is loved again and again and again so he never forgets it. 

– Chase Klavon ’25

There was a period of time where I molded myself exactly after my mom. Her favorite color was purple, so mine was too. She ate rice with every meal, so I did too. She loved to read in the afternoon, so I sat at the foot of her bed, book in hand, diligently pretending to flip through the pages as I watched her from afar and got maybe one chapter in. She’d eventually give in and read aloud to me, giving voices to every character in Harry Potter until her voice got hoarse. For Valentine’s Day, we used to make cards for each other and decorate them in glitter glue. I was always ashamed to give her my card with messy handwriting and slightly disturbing stick figures. She still has them all in a box stored away with my childhood memories. My mom was the person who taught me how to love. I think that makes her the first person I loved, too. 

– Jennifer Levine ’28

My first love was humanity. I’ve been called many things. Gullible. Naive. Always foolhardy in my optimism. I’ve never been able to help myself.

I just think it’s so breath-catchingly beautiful how we humans are such small, self-absorbed things. How we live almost entirely in our own worlds the duration of our lives, so concerned about whether we look all right and whether we are liked and what people think and how much better or worse we are than every other being around us. 

And still, we find it in us to hold hands and get brunch with friends just to catch up and tell strangers they’re pretty. We routinely wrench goodness and kindness and love out of our twisted little selfish depths, offering up morsels of ourselves against all sense.

– Allie Skalnik ’26

My first love was Frank Ocean’s Blonde. It was like he read 14-year-old me up and down and said, “Yeah, I’ll make an album that will make her feel like an astral speck drifting through space and a lion’s roar heard across safari planes.” Both. At the same time. I hung the record cover on my bedroom ceiling. To fall asleep, I counted the water droplets down Frank’s face in place of sheep over fences. I thought about the difference between “Blonde” and “Blond.”

— Linden Hansen ’28

My first love was dance. I remember watching my cousin play a horse in a ballet product of Cinderella, and then proudly declaring “I want to do that.” I was by no means very good, but I was having fun skipping around studios and learning how to touch my toes. 

They say you never forget your first love, and for me, that’s held true. I still feel the same first love taking the occasional ballet class or going to social dance events. 

– Sharis Hsu ’28