As many seniors finish taking their last exams, and go their separate ways, two best friends can still sometimes be found on campus. With one of the strongest friendships in school, Kitty Fan and Kavya Menke can almost  always be found talking and laughing together.

Fan and Menke met on the first day of class in eighth grade when they were seated near each other. From then on, they became fast friends, and in the years since, they have been in almost all of the same classes and advisory, where they have become an almost inseparable pair.

“I had never really had a best friend in school before. Someone to just hang out with or someone to roast you,” Menke said.

Both outstanding students, Fan and Menke will be attending University of Pennsylvania and Duke University, respectively. Fan was deciding between UPenn and Carnegie Mellon, while Menke was deciding between Duke and Upenn. While Fan and Menke are sad that they will not be attending the same colleges as each other, they also believe that they each made the right choice.

“Duke fits Kavya really well. UPenn is very urban, and Kavya would rather work in a city and study in the suburbs with many research opportunities. Duke is a perfect fit for her. I saw Duke coming,” Fan said. 

Getting into such prestigious colleges isn’t easy though, and Fan and Menke have spent lots of time studying together. They help each other succeed in their weaker subject areas. Kitty is strong in math and sciences, and Kavya excels in English, world language, and humanities courses. Together they make a great pair that can achieve almost anything.

“Kavya is a paradoxical person. She seems very relaxed and fun on the outside, but is also Valedictorian. She is always very funny and loves her puns, but is also proactive and professional when working. She knows so many things, and a lot of random stuff, in random fields,” Fan said. 

Outside of academics, Menke and Fan are very joyful and funny people who share many niche inside jokes. 

“This one time we were sitting in assembly together and for some unknown reason there was a potted plant sitting on a stool on the side of the stage. I don’t know why, but we thought it was the funniest thing and we kept pointing at the stool and laughing throughout the entire assembly. Now, whenever we want a laugh one of us will just say ‘plant’ or ‘stool’ and the other will burst out laughing,” Menke said.

Fan added, “In AP literature, one of the words we learned this year was coquette. Which means a person who flirts with other people all the time. So we picked up this word and just kept calling each other coquette throughout the year. People were always getting pretty confused when we would say that, and whenever people say the word coquette it now makes us laugh!”

Their friendship does not go unnoticed by their teachers. While the pair approaches their studies with energy and determination, there is also a joy and lightheartedness that exists in everything they do.

“They have a language that they communicate with through their hands. It’s a lot more than just a fist bump. Several times during each class there would be some physical form of communication between them. I guess they’ve developed quite a vocabulary over the years,” their latin teacher Mike Butler said.

Together these two make a perfect pair, and as the school year comes to a close, the absence of these two friends is felt throughout the entire high school. It’s an absence that Menke feels too. 

“I’m going to mail myself to Philadelphia,” Menke said.