Top 2025 Moments: ‘Heated Rivalry’ to Hair Dye

If you haven’t noticed, 2025 Wrapped is everywhere. There’s 2025 Wrapped on Discord, Apple Music, YouTube, ChatGPT, Steam, Snapchat, and even the queue software the Computer Science department at Oberlin uses for lab-helping sessions (Queue Me In Wrapped!). We’ve commoditized our personal data for the sake of quantifying a year’s worth of experiences––in Spotify, our top artists, our top albums, and our total minutes on the app. Your listening age is 78!, Spotify chirps. You spent 2880 minutes helping students, Queue Me In cheers.

Well, for the sake of individuality, I will not call this a 2025 Wrapped blog post––but I am sick of explaining how good this semester was. I don’t think words would do this semester justice. Instead, I compiled some of my favorite pictures from this semester, each one a story in and of itself. I hope you enjoy a semester in review, from ‘Heated Rivalry’ to pregaming for the Feve.

September

Dempsey and Emmy are my jazz friends. Emmy was studying abroad this semester, but she visited Oberlin twice from New York. When she was in town, we got ready together and walked to the Feve, drinking and catching up with our friends.

Hanna, Maeve, Riley, and Layla (four girls in the middle) are my close friends. At the beginning of the year, Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) hosts a beginning-of-the-year picnic. All are invited to attend. We enjoyed chocolate cake.

Maeve, Layla, and Elyssa (my roomie) were walking from our house back to theirs. Our friend group of seven is split between two houses, each on one end of campus. Our (Elyssa, Anna, and I) house is objectively better. Don't tell Hanna––she'll insist that her house is tastefully messy.

October

Tank Co-Op has this thing where you dress as another student in the co-op. Naturally, Hanna and I dressed as each other. That's her orange sweater, and she's wearing my flannel jacket. We fooled everyone. No one knew it was me, Natalie, dressed as Hanna. An impeccable costume.

Another Hanna picture. She simply does the funniest things. We went for a walk on the bike trail (would highly recommend) when she saw a sign on the side of the road––Free Black Walnuts! I laughed to myself; no one would be so stupid as to grab one of the bags. Black walnuts are like cut grass––less than worthless. Who would want cut grass? Who would want a bag of black walnuts? My grandfather used to pay my little brother a penny for every walnut he picked off the ground. Black walnuts are annoying and a pain for every lawn mower.

Well, I'm sure the picture explains a lot. Hanna grabbed the bag of black walnuts.

Update: she left them behind Tank Hall and someone else grabbed them.

Julia and I got cotton candy from Get Wilder, a Halloween event. She tried to fit the entire cone in her mouth. God, I love her.

November

I didn't take any pictures in November. 

That's a lie, but none of them are good.

December

Elyssa dyed my hair red. It was on a total whim. I said, "Gee, it would be cool to dye my hair red. I've always wanted to do it." Elyssa said, "We should do it tomorrow." I said, "That would be very irresponsible. I have finals," but Elyssa shoved my car keys into my hand, forced me to drive to Sally Beauty, and then dyed my hair. It was very irresponsible. She's the worst. (Just kidding, I love Elyssa.)

We watched Heated Rivalry for the last few weeks of the semester. I'd work my butt off in Mudd Library, walk back home in the freezing cold, and find Anna and Riley huddled on the couch, watching two hockey players fall in love. College is very academic, as you can see.

This was our last dinner party. We exchanged white elephant gifts and drank homemade mulled wine. This is the after effects of dying my hair red. It's giving Ariel. We had an amazing feast, and the last of our guests left around midnight. We are truly the best hosts of the game. 

It's been a wonderful semester. I wouldn't wish it any different.