The French essayist Michel de Montaigne once wrote “friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.” There’s this sappy cliche my mother has pasted on a quote board she bought at TJ Maxx a bunch of years back that says basically the same thing. It reads "A good friend is hard to find, harder to lose, and impossible to forget," and I’ve never stopped making fun of her for giving it such a place of prominence above our kitchen sink. Something like that goes without saying, mum, Montaigne. A good friend is precious. When I think about friendships at Dublin School, the senior duo of Autumn M. and Adelaide D. is one that comes to mind. In this interview, the Quad talks to Autumn about her Dublin experience, and also Adelaide about Autumn’s Dublin experience in an interview format that shares some characteristics with the married couple game we sometimes play at Morning Meeting. Read on!

Liam Sullivan (LS):
Autumn, you’re a boarding student, and yet you live in Greenfield, which is super, super close to Dublin. Why do you choose to board at Dublin when you could go home at the end of every day? 

Autumn M. ‘25 (AM):
Well, it's a big answer for that. I love my family, but we're not the most organized. When I was going to the middle school in Peterborough, I was late constantly and I was sick and tired of being late. Then, when I was first looking at Dublin, it seemed like Boarders just had more of the full experience and there was more access to teachers, especially during study hall, which I liked.

Adelaide D. ‘25 (AD):
And she met me!

LS:
And you met Adelaide. We'll get to Adelaide in a few minutes. So senior spring, how's that going? 

AM:
My senior spring has been pretty great. I'm not senioritis-ing super hard, but there definitely is some homework I should be doing rather than this, but that's okay. 

LS:
What are your plans for next year?

AM:
I'm going to Northeastern University. I'm going to be majoring in behavioral neuroscience and I'm spending my first year at their Oakland campus, which I am excited and scared for. I have never been further west in this country than Louisiana.

LS:
Why that program?

AM:
I have a chronic headache disorder, and so it's made me super interested in neuroscience for five years and then taking psych here, I was like, oh my goodness, learning about the brain. So fun. My goal, really, is to be a doctor, and so it was really just picking a major that would help me get there

LS:
And also a program that would stoke your curiosity.

AM:
Yeah, absolutely. 

LS:
You're a busy person on this campus. You captain of the Crew and Sculling teams. You were Eurydice in Hadestown, a member of the school’s dance ensemble, co-leader of IFG, and heavily involved in student government, not to mention a great student. How do you find your peace on campus amidst the madness?

AM:
It's definitely a challenge. I do find it when I'm in my room with my roommate, and then it's really just spending time with the people that I've met here. The instant I'm out of practice or  am out of a meeting, I'm texting my friends, ‘where are you? You want to play sweat, foosball?’ And I love just spending time in Gillespie playing games or just sitting and chatting with people.

LS:
So this is where Adelaide enters the chat. Have you been roommates throughout your time in Dublin?

AD:
Not freshman year. So freshman year, obviously you don't choose your roommate because you don't know anyone going in. We were in the same dorm, though, and Autumn would come down the hall and hang out in my room. I think the first photo I have of Autumn is from one of those nights when we were hanging out in my room. We had just had so much floor space and we were just hanging out. Over the summer I was like, ‘Do you want to room together?’ And so we've roomed ever since.

LS:
Autumn, I know you’re very important to Adelaide. Can you talk about y'all's friendship a little bit and what it's like to have a roommate you really love?

AM:
Oh my God. Stop. Stop. It's really great. We definitely had a rocky start. I think the biggest fight we've ever had together in our lives was over light. It was over a coo-tone or warm-tone light. She hated the overhead in our room sophomore year and I didn't have a desk lamp, and so she'd be like, ‘I need to shut this overhead off. And I'm like, Adelaide, I need to do my homework. I can't see.’ And it would be this whole big discussion.

AD:
We've honestly reached a consensus with all the rooms we've had where my desk is kind of the desk that we do stuff at. Hers is more for storage. We both work at my desk. I don't know how it kind of comes up, but sometimes I'll walk in the room and she's just doing work at my desk and I'm like, ‘oh, hey, what's up?’ I kick her out if I need it.

AM:
Especially because we've become so close, it is a nice place to come back to. It makes the room feel a lot like home, and we just sometimes have really deep discussions when we really shouldn't be.

AD:
We are up so late sometimes. Very recently we did that. We're up to 12:00 having a really in depth,  both philosophical and political conversation. It was crazy. It was crazy.

LS:
That's what it's all about! So you won't be rooming together next year…

AD:
Stop. No. It’s not real. 

LS:
Okay, so Adelaide, I'm going to have you answer some questions about Autumn. Autumn, if she gets them totally wrong, or you object, please intervene. Adelaide, in Norway you and I think maybe Jules A. ‘26 told me everyone should know their closest friend’s favorite color, favorite flower, and whether they wear gold or silver jewelry. 

AD:
Her favorite flower is an orchid. Favorite color? Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's green. She does wear a lot of blue and green, but I'd say definitely green. She wears silver jewelry. She wears silver jewelry. She does sometimes wear gold. She flip-flops between the two, but she mostly wears silver. I buy her silver jewelry. I mostly wear gold jewelry, so sometimes I’ll steal her gold jewelry. She waits to do homework till the last minute… We both get a bed around 10:30…

AM:
Oh, that's another nice thing about living together! Yes. Our sleep schedules, she completely changed my sleep schedule. I was a late sleeper. I destroyed my sleep habits freshman year. It was so bad actually. I would go to bed at 3:00 AM freshman year.

LS:
Tell me about it. I'll say why I wish I had a roommate right now because when you're accountable to yourself, it's a disaster. It's just like 1:00 AM. It's 2:00 AM. What am I doing awake right now?

AD:
I know. Same thing when I'm at home. It's so weird. Sometimes I'll call Autumn because I'm like, ‘oh my gosh.’ 

LS:
Does she have a favorite Broadway show? 

AD:
So she started listening to Hadestown sophomore year, so she really got into Hadestown before I knew some of it. I had heard it, but she likes Hayestown a lot. We listen to a lot of Wicked together. I think that's more of a together one though. I don't know how much she listens to it on her own, but she listens to it. Obviously Hamilton is in there. I don't know. We honestly like to listen to a lot of opening numbers from a lot of shows. We like to play a playlist of all the different openings and so that's kind of what I'm basing off of. We love Wicked. Oh, and also in Wicked, Glinda and Elphaba are roommates. It's perfect.

LS:
Which is Glinda?

AM:
[Pointing at Adelaide] Glinda. She’s blonde and pretty and she does all her makeup. And there's a lyric that's like, ‘you see my roommate is unusually extremely peculiar and altogether impossible to describe,’ that’s Adelaide. 

AM:
We love duets. Duets are our thing because in general I sing more soprano and she sings more alto. We can switch. I sing alto in choir. We love anything that we can harmonize with.

LS:
There you go. Harmonizing. Okay. A little bit of a deeper cut. Do you think senior year Autumn would recognize freshman year Autumn, or has it been a four year journey?

AM: 
Definitely a journey.
AD:
She would recognize her, but she'd have a lot to say. She'd have a lot to say. She'd have a lot of life lessons and a lot of, well, first she'd say your hair's not straight…

AM:
[Laughing] Stop…

AD:
…First she'd say, cut your hair. Your hair's not straight. She's had a long hair journey. Autumn now has much more of a backbone than Autumn little Autumn did. And I think she encouraged her to stand up more for her actual emotions and feelings towards things.

LS:
Now Adelaide, do you think Autumn, could become a successful Instagram / TikTok influencer? 

AD:
No, no, no chance.

LS:
What's holding her back?

AD:
Well, first she has Instagram, but she doesn't post anything. The most she does is send me things. She doesn't understand the language of Snapchat. She leaves me on open for months. She's never had TikTok. I mean, she kind of understands some of it on…

AM:
That's untrue! That's untrue! I've had TikTok, I've had – I sound so bad – I've had TikToks. 

AD:
But no, I don't think she could. I think she could if I was her advisor. I think we could definitely start a singing quiet thing, but I would have to be her social media manager. Yeah. I think she has the talents for things that would do well, but she doesn't know how to market it.

AM:
A hundred percent. Yeah.

LS:
What kind of old person is Autumn going to be?

AM:
Oh my God. We were just talking about her. That's why Hunter

AD:
I think that Autumn is going to be an old person who is very discontent with retirement. I don't think she's going to know what to do with herself when she doesn't have a project. I think that's going to lead her to be a very active old person. Maybe not in the literal running / jogging sense, but actually maybe, yeah, I feel like she'll continue rowing out of spite, continue rowing even if it destroys her. She'll retire and then probably join some sort of nonprofit  or start one herself. Something that's a little more chill, but I don't think she's ever not going to be doing something.

LS:
Last question, this one is for Autumn. What are you going to miss most about Dublin?

AM:
Living with her. The community is great and I'm so happy that I was here, but I think that I could get back that community and I can still contact friends, but the experience being with her all the time, that’ll be harder to come by.

LS:
You guys overcame the cool-light. 

AD:
We did!

AM:
That also became a bit of a problem junior year when it wasn't the overhead light, but it was her desk light because I think a bulb had broken or something and she didn't have, she didn't want to order a new one and I was like, ‘Autumn, I swear God, I will order this for you. I cannot function with this white light going.’ It made me go crazy.

LS:
This is a good problem to have.

AD:
Oh, absolutely. It's the worst we've had and if anything else, maybe it's like if one of us has work that we have to do late or later into the night and one of us really wants to go to bed early, but it's all because of the light..I finally got a reading light, and I keep it in the room. And so when Autumn is like, ‘I need to do work. I need to read for English,’ I give her the reading light and go to bed.