I met Stephanie on a college trip to Turkey. I made a lot of friends on that trip, but she was a soulmate. She was weird, creative, spontaneous, and always optimistic. When we returned to Tennessee, we kept hanging out, and she quickly became my college bestie.

Having started our friendship while traveling, we continued to roadtrip together – short trips to Memphis, longer trips up I-55 to my hometown, and longest trips to Savannah where we both had family to visit. Long car rides with Stephanie were easy. We shared a love of 90s pop songs and modern musicals. We were both obsessed with A Very Potter Musical, and we perfected our duet to “Granger Danger.” We also used those long rides to craft the most absurd and delightful iMovies of our adventures. We loved over-documenting ourselves, with pictures and videos and dumb clips, and we proudly showed our creations to anyone who was unfortunate to be around us for more than five minutes. The most tragic thing in the world is that I cannot seem to find our 1-55 Adventure video, which was at least 15 minutes long and was totally awesome. Continue reading