Trinity undergrad · second year · economist's daughter, biochemist by training
Anya Shumi-Park
Came with: Two friends from college, one date she'd known for three weeks
The night you find out what kind of room you want to be in.
Arrival
Anya at the queue outside the Hall at 8:42pm, the dress she didn't want to wear actually working, the date already her favorite version of himself.
The arc
Anya's friends had been to a May Ball before. She had not. She spent the first hour trying to look like she had. By midnight she had stopped, and the rest of the night turned into the most truthful evening she had had in two years of college.
Moments
The night, by hour.
Each moment is what was actually captured — a photograph, a voice note, a saved track, a face that mattered. The artifact survives the punting at dawn.
01 · Trinity Great Hall
Hall dinner · 8:30pm
Captured
The wine pairing she didn't know the name of. Three saved table-mates. The toast made by a fellow she only later realized was her supervisor's supervisor.
Kept
The toast and the name of the wine. The realization she could ask without performing not-asking.
with datewith two friendswith table-mates02 · Backs · funfair
Bumper-cars · 10:30pm
Captured
Eight photographs of the date losing. A voice note from a stranger in line. The discovery that her supervisor (different from the toast-supervisor) had also brought her partner.
Kept
The stranger's voice note — a one-line piece of advice about her thesis that she would think about for weeks.
with datewith stranger in linewith her supervisor + partner03 · Old Combination Room
Acoustic room · 12:15am
Captured
Three saved tracks. A photograph of the date asleep on her shoulder during the slow song. Her own voice note: 'I think I'm happy.'
Kept
Her own voice note. The slow song. The fact that she said it out loud.
with date04 · Wren Library steps
Survivors' photograph · 5:48am
Captured
The dawn photograph. Both friends in. The date in. Anya in the front row.
Kept
The photograph and the certainty that she had been somewhere that mattered.
with datewith two friendswith fifteen people she had not met before midnight
Rituals
What the night repeated.
First-year ball
Her actual first. The friends' second.
The supervisor's toast
Unrelated to her field. Notable anyway.
Survivors' photo at dawn
First time in the front row.
Meetings
Who the night put in the same room.
Stranger in line at the bumper cars
Backs · 10:34pm
One-line advice about her thesis from a person whose name she never asked. Anya saved the voice note. The advice changed her literature review.
Follow-up · Anya is trying to figure out who he was via the committee's opt-in directory.
Her date
Acoustic room · 12:15am
Three-week-old relationship turning into a year-long one in the time it took to play one slow song.
Follow-up · Coffee at Fitzbillies the day after.
The memory card
Trinity May Ball 2026 · the night I stopped pretending
What Anya kept: her own voice note, the dawn photograph, the toast wine name, the stranger's thesis advice, and a sense that the room she wanted to be in for the rest of her life was a real room, not an imagined one.
The photograph
The dawn photograph. Anya in the front row, hair flat, dress crumpled, smile entirely unposed. The date behind her with both hands on her shoulders.
A question for the college
"Could the committee help me find the person who gave me one line of advice in a bumper-car queue?"
The guest leaves the night with a question for the college, not a survey. The committee inherits a routable conversation.
Keep this
A night thread that survives the morning.
When you opt in, this night becomes part of your college thread. Next year's ball remembers your moments. Alumni in five years can find each other through what they shared, not just where they sat.
Return to the ball thread