Roughly 2,782 miles separate Maryland and California.
On paper, they sit on opposite sides of the country, separated by highways, mountains and countless towns in between. The odds that two people from those places would cross paths seem almost impossible.
After a tour of NBC Chicago, a few cherubs and I headed to a nearby Indian restaurant. Over paneer cheese and chicken tikka, we swapped stories about where we came from, why we love journalism and who shaped our lives before we arrived in Evanston.
Rebecca Dodek of Rockville, Maryland casually mentioned that she knew someone from my home of California through a summer camp.
Then she said a name.
“Anarose Smith.”
I immediately looked up.
“Wait, that’s my cousin.”
Rebecca thought I was joking. It sounded too unlikely to be true. There was no reason for her to believe that someone she knew from a summer camp in California would somehow be related to the person sitting across from her at lunch in Chicago.
But then we did what Medill-trained journalists do: We investigated.
We pulled out our phones, searched Instagram profiles and started texting our families to fact check what seemed like an impossible coincidence.
It was true.
A person I had met thousands of miles away from home was already connected to my life before I ever arrived at Northwestern. Out of all the people Rebecca could have met, all the summer camps she could have attended and all the places we both could have ended up, we somehow found ourselves sitting at the same table.
Then we discovered other six degrees of surprises.
Zoe Romney of San Francisco and Ellie Adams of Concord, Massachusetts, realized they had both attended Jim Millinder’s soccer camp at the University of San Francisco years earlier, unknowingly sharing summers filled with soccer drills and talent shows. Amalia Rosen of Highland Park, Illinois, and Madelyn Cass of Boulder, Colorado, learned they had participated in the same New York Times student program the year before cherubs, and later discovered Amalia walking through the background of one of Madelyn’s TikTok videos from the event.
These moments represent what makes cherubs so special. I arrived at Northwestern expecting to improve my writing, strengthen my reporting skills and learn from professional journalists. I did all of those things.
But I also discovered that journalism is about asking questions, listening to people’s stories and finding the unexpected links between lives that may seem completely separate.
Cherubs brought together students from across the country who arrived as strangers but quickly formed a community. Every conversation revealed something new — a shared interest, a new perspective or, in my case, a connection that I never saw coming.
The 2,782 miles seemed like an impossible distance.
At cherubs, it was just a few conversations away.
