From Gardening Club to French class to stage tech to cross-country to Women in STEM, this trio can be found laughing together all around campus and beyond. Yet Sophie Hamilton, Vivian Li, and Talula Clark have not only been an inseparable trio throughout high school—they have been together since kindergarten and have kept their friendship impossibly close since.
“I know I met Talula first,” Hamilton said. “We were in the same kindergarten class, and it must have been the first few weeks or months. Then I met Vivian [on the first day of kindergarten BLAST], and the rest was history.”
Since then, the three have grown up and have been there for each other every step of the way. After years of running at Condit’s 100-mile club, they joined the El Roble cross-country team in seventh grade, and, outside of the pandemic, continued cross-country all the way until senior year, winning “Best Racing Trio” at their final banquet. In freshman year, Clark convinced Li and Hamilton to join stage tech; the three have been involved in theatre since. Throughout their schooling, they have done endless group projects (note Hamilton’s head on a platter, best served cold), partaken in the arts (Li and Hamilton in flute, Clark in dance), volunteered for the California Botanic Gardens, waved Canadian flags (Clark and Hamilton being Canadian themselves, with Li having “honorary Canadian citizenship”), and had some epic group Halloween costumes—highlights include bald men, a physics free-body diagram, and the Powerpuff girls. A couple of years ago, they held a ten-year friendship anniversary celebration for just the three of them.
“These are the OGs,” Hamilton said. “My personality is like a mix of Vivian and Talula’s personalities.”
“These are my day ones,” Clark said. “All my friends’ vocabularies mesh together. Sometimes we say the same thing at the same time—our brains are Bluetooth connected.”
As high school draws to a close, though, the trio will have to part ways for a time. Hamilton will be heading to northern California to UC Berkeley to pursue astrophysics, while Li will be going south to UC San Diego for microbiology. Clark, on the other hand, will be found on the other side of the country studying computer science and design at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The three are looking forward to experiencing Berkeley’s top-notch physics program, the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, and Northeastern’s extensive professional experience Co-Op program, respectively. While they are all interested in different STEM fields, they all intend to continue many of the same things they have done throughout high school.
“I’m probably going to do everything I do now,” Li said. “I want to do [stage] tech, […] lab research, and run. I’m hoping to get a job and bulk up.”
Clark and Hamilton concurred—in addition to more potential experiences for stage tech and jobs, the three all have hopes for grad school and work in research or industry post-college.
While the future holds unlimited possibilities, it is clear that the trio’s connection will continue to stay strong for years to come. With all of them being amazing and fantastic human beings, it is hard not to imagine otherwise.
Hamilton, Li, and Clark would like to shoutout the other members in their trio, Pope Leo XIV, Nettspend, running trauma bonding, Sunday 100-mile club runs, Nettspend, Talula’s house, Morro Bay, Jasper and Miso, Bistro, the Wolfpacket, and Nettspend. That’s all, folks.
UPDATE: Since the writing of this article, Clark has since accepted a place in New York University’s class of 2029 and will join Avan Bisono and Leo Cheng at NYU!
