Elisabeth Martin, Campus Carrier Features Editor

For most of my life, I’ve been identified as “the triplets,” referring to me and my two brothers who share a birthday. I used to really resent this because I was always just one of three. I thought I lost part of my identity to “the bundle,” like I wasn’t an individual.

Daily, people would ask me where my brothers were, as if I had some kind of GPS connection and I constantly knew their exact whereabouts. We had all of the same classes and we did all of the same extracurriculars.

I had it easier than my brothers because I was the only girl, but I still hated watching people confuse my two brothers even though they look nothing alike. People didn’t even bother to learn their names because they had already labeled my individual, unique brothers as the same. It started to feel like people thought we didn’t exist outside of each other.

I love my brothers dearly, but by the end of high school, I was really ready to move away from home to a place where I would be known by my own name (and my name only).

Now that my two brothers and I all go to different colleges, we definitely exist individually. While I think it’s funny to be able to drop the triplet thing on people really casually, (“two of my brothers are also juniors and we like to compare how our schools are differe-” “whoa, wait, are they twins?” “Triplets, actually…”) I’m slowly figuring out that life outside of the bundle isn’t actually all it’s cracked up to be.

I realized when I got to college and my brothers were hours away that I didn’t really know how to exist outside my group of three.

Before coming to college, I never had to eat a meal alone. I never had to actually socialize in an unfamiliar situation because I had a brother to stand next to. I never had to worry about approaching groups of people because I always had a brother who knew at least one person in any given cluster. I’ve never not had anyone to complain about a teacher or a homework assignment with. I had never had to take a long road trip by myself. I always had backup and I was almost never bored.

Some would argue that it’s good to know how to do these things alone, and I agree. I found a lot of growth in my quest to figure out how to be my solo self. Certainly, nobody should be totally dependent on two other people to create their joy for them, and it’s good to have alone time and learn to be entertained on your own. However, I’m just saying that living life in threes is so much better.

Three is enough people to have a spontaneous Nerf war. It’s the perfect number of donuts to eat in one sitting. It’s the best number of days in a weekend. And it’s definitely the best number of siblings to grow up with.