On a warm Friday evening just outside the Norris University Center, I stood with a group of cherubs watching the faint shadows of fish in the lakefill pond below. As high school students fresh from junior year, our conversation moved quickly from Andy’s Frozen Custard to the impending release of AP test scores.

“Did anyone take AP Lang?” I asked.

In unison, two voices chimed, “Yes!” Chelsea Surmanek, Tracy Cook and I delved into a conversation about the AP Language and Composition exam.

My AP Lang class lampooned the course’s overuse of acronyms like DIDLS and SOAPSTONE to represent the main pillars of literary analysis. This running joke came to define my junior year English education. It is so deeply rooted in my memory of the class that I felt I had to mention it to Chelsea and Tracy. I highly doubted they would have any idea what I was talking about.

To my surprise, as soon as I mentioned DIDLS and SOAPSTONE, they both let out little yelps of excitement and then began laughing hysterically. They knew exactly what I was talking about.

That connection I shared with Chelsea and Tracy about AP Lang showed me that as teens, our similarities truly outweigh our apparent differences. Even though we come from all over the country (and the world), we share the same jokes, the same experiences, the same frustrations and the same bumpy ride that is surviving high school and growing up.

Meeting kids with whom I had a surprising amount in common made me more confident in my ability to make friends and relate to others. Being a cherub made me stronger, because I realized that I am not alone.