I put up a picture of my new friends in my new office, in my new building, starting my new Ph.D. program. Dr. S, A, and J. Their smiling faces look at me each day when I get to my office before 8 a.m., printing out rosters for a class I teach or taking a moment to eat breakfast before attending my own classes. Each time I see the picture, I am reminded: here are three people who believe in me. Three people who love me. Three people who I admire. That is all wonderful and it fills me up with so much joy, but it is not the main reason these people fill my office. The most important thing about these three women is this: I trust them, and together, we hung the moon. Let me explain.
 
I met Dr. S at a difficult point in my life. I had just gone through my first breakup, we were still in the middle of a global pandemic, and I was starting a one-year master’s program that I was not passionate about. Despite all this, I applied for a research project focused on having difficult conversations with various campus stakeholders to help further critical consciousness around anti-racism on campus. Luckily for me, Dr. S saw something in me that I was beginning to struggle to see in myself and took me onto her project where I met A & J. 
 
The first few months with the project were difficult and I felt isolated. I missed a meeting, I was one of the only non-communication majors, and I was struggling to find where I fit into the bigger conversation. Then, in a turn that would change my life and lead me on the path I am today, I was randomly sent to a Zoom breakout room with A & J to work on creating a syllabus for a new course to be offered to staff in the spring. Sitting in the back of my car on my laptop waiting for my cat to get out of surgery, my trio of friendship began. Critical to this story is my lack of recall about this specific moment because, in the moment, it was yet another pedantic, droll meeting. I remember that we talked vaguely about syllabi, and I tried to help without having much background knowledge. Dr. S popped in from time to time, the hour ended, I picked up my cat, and drove home.
 
The same thing happened the next week, where I sat this time at my kitchen table and worked with A & J to figure out what we could do to help create this course alongside Dr. S. Rinse and repeat; week in and week out, me, A, J, and occasionally Dr. S would meet. Our meetings became so frequent that I stopped sitting at my kitchen table and began instead to do meetings from the couch while playing with my cat, or with an adult beverage in my hand, in my pajamas, sitting on my bed with only a candle lighting my face. 
 
Fast forward a few months later and I have applied to the Ph.D. program that Dr. S teaches in and A is getting ready to graduate from. I have made it to the second step in the application process (fueled by support from J telling me to get out of my own head and just hit submit) and I want to run my questions by a more knowledgeable other. Enter A who, after a full day of writing and working, took an hour off to meet with me on Zoom to give me feedback about everything I didn’t know. Despite only having known me for a few months, she stepped up and gave me feedback, but more importantly, she gave me confidence when I had none of my own. Soon after this meeting, I was formally accepted, and A sent me cookies, “To the future Dr. Couri.” 
 
With an acceptance letter in hand, Dr. S, A, J, and I continued our work, but now I knew I was finally going to be joining the club and decided to let a little of my well-worn and well-loved imposter syndrome go. The spring semester was when the four of us became close. Now that we had a syllabus, we now had a class to teach and every single week we would get together for hours, pouring over news, journal articles, webpages, educational software, videos, and everything else required to create a course. For the most part, we stayed muted and worked individually to get our Canvas and PowerPoint prepared to teach. But not always. Some nights we socialized more than we worked. Me, with my pajamas and ice cream sandwiches and silly Zoom backgrounds. J, with her dogs and her husband and her daughter and her life advice. A, with her dinner and her stack of books for her dissertation and her incomparable joy for life. And Dr. S, with her homemade meals and her vivid stories and her tinkling laughter. 
 
What we did together that semester was no less a feat than hanging the moon. I have often heard this phrase used when someone thinks highly of another person, in that, ‘Delaney thinks that Dr. S, A, & J hung the moon.’ But what this phrase cannot capture about these three women and the grieving that I have done watching them all – for one reason or another – leave the project we all loved, is the collective sense of accomplishment, comradery… of family, that comes when four people hang the moon TOGETHER. Because, despite our ages, our degrees, our affinities, identities, and affiliations, none of us could reach it on our own. But together? I think so highly of us together and what we were able to do. 
 
So, each morning when I walk into my office, I am reminded of these women. My heart fills with pride and just as quickly breaks again as I find myself without them, wandering the halls, unable to help the feeling that something is missing.
 
– Delaney Couri
 
Delaney is a first-year Ph.D. student in the College of Liberal Arts.