Ruby Saha ’14

Hi! I’m Ruby. I’m Bengali, which means I subsist on fish and rice, wear brightly colored garments and sometimes say words that don’t sound like English because they’re not. I was born in the tropical land of Indonesia, which is why I hate cold weather; I picked up my confusing accent when I briefly lived in Sydney, Australia; I now divide my time between a little college town you may have heard about called Oberlin, and a jigsaw-puzzle of cultures and languages that is the tiny South-East Asian island of Singapore, which is not located anywhere near or in China.

I’m a violinist and an art historian. I’m a metalhead, but I love film soundtracks; I hate tomatoes, but I love sundried tomatoes. I like to soak up the sun surrounded by my favourite people. My passion in life is good food. I’m ethnically ambiguous, which means I like to make people guess where I’m from — I think my favourite so far is Zanzibar.

Somehow I made it to being a second year, and the last year of my life has been a rollercoaster of experiences both in and out of the classroom. I took classes that I still can’t pronounce, saw snow for the first time in my life, added another language to my ever-growing collection, taught myself how to cook oatmeal (it’s a big deal, okay), clashed with a professor over the spelling of ‘color’, lost a beloved member of my family and learned to appreciate the beauty of a home-cooked meal. I’ve discovered that I love everything to do with the Middle East, and that I am never going to take another physics class as long as I live. I’m not the same person I was when I left home last year. My life at Oberlin has opened me to a wealth of experiences and this is barely even the beginning.