Standing among hundreds of my fellow students, some of them my best friends and others I might never know, I took in the melody of quite an eclectic chorus. To my left, I heard a voice slightly off key; to my right, a voice too high. Somewhere down the row it seemed someone was practicing a mediocre Macy Gray impersonation.But it was some of the most beautiful music I can remember because of the power of everyone singing together.

Members of the Brandeis community had gathered together in Spingold in observance of Yom Kippur, one of the most important days in Judaism. However, while reciting supposedly solemn prayers I could not restrain a smile creeping out from within me, and at times, I could barely hold back the urge to bounce to the tune of the prayers. I settled on tapping my feet in compromise-and this during a fast, no less.

What had struck me-what made me so utterly upbeat on such a serious and draining day-was the realization of what a special situation I was experiencing. To put it in basketball terms, I was shooting for a triple-double: to share a connection with so many people, in the same room, at the same time. Only in this case, my entire team, the people of row 15 on the balcony, had achieved the same feat with me.

Sure, my team had played together on the same court many times before. We ate together, went into Boston together and some of us even lived together. But rare are the truly special moments one shares even among her closest friends.

Now, in this campus theatre, I was suddenly joined by my entire team, playing together with scores of others in a tradition carried on by countless generations. Surely many of us had attended holiday services before he had arrived at Brandeis. But how remarkable are the circumstances that could possibly bring together such a large group of people on this day?

Certainly there were students from close by in Massachusetts. Sure, there were students from the Northeast. But here I was, a Jew from the South, and I was singing a song I learned at my little synagogue in Columbia, S.C. with my friends from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Texas.

Scattered throughout the crowd were similar groups of friends from all over the country and the world, each person having come to this very room at this very time with a different story to tell and a different way of having arrive there. Together, we sang songs we had all learned before meeting each other. Together, singing, we were all Brandeis students.

Everyday we take part in mundane activities that are part of what it is to be a college student. We take classes, form cliques, join clubs and forge relationships, sometimes oblivious to the presence or significance of others around us. We forget to take time-outs-to pause and reflect on how connected we are and will always be because of the simple fact of being a Brandeis student.

But it is in sharing moments like the one I experienced a little more than a week ago, that we are presented with the rare opportunity to actually visualize what it means to have such a connection with so many different people.

Certainly, we do not all attend Yom Kippur services. Brandeis students attend Catholic Protestant and Muslim services on holidays throughout the year, just to name a few of these meaningful gatherings. Some of us attend no religious services at all. But what about times when some of us have protested or campaigned for a cause for which we are steadfastly passionate, standing along with our fellow Brandeis students? Or perhaps some of us have attended an especially memorable performance where there was uniform laughing, crying and cheering with fellow Brandeis students. These are not the moments we can capture with a Kodak camera. There's no flash quite bright enough to sufficiently illuminate what exactly it is that can be felt during these brief moments in time.

But if we were to take a picture, it would reveal students from countless religions, places, backgrounds and experiences. Yet together, we are all Brandeis. Our shared relationships and experiences from the years we each spend here will in some way influence each of our lives in the years to come. To the unique vocabulary through which we individually assert our separate identities each of us will be adding the label "Brandeis."

Thus, experiences we share with one another both in and outside of the frame of Brandeis-chance meetings in a neighborhood, at social events and in our careers-are all the more special because of our Brandeis connection.

This connection will remain indestructibly vital. Only as time passes will the tangible fragments and visible expressions of that connection wither, as we lose both physical and emotional proximity to each other, and as we become embroiled in new aspects of our lives.

That's why it's nice to be reminded of that connection during this short time we have as students to experience it here every day. Sometimes it just takes an auditorium full of people and of their great and not-so-great voices to remember.