They’re practically sisters. They’ve written together, roomed together, mourned together.

But Three Penny Press editor-in-chiefs Karis Chen and Lydia Tong’s inseparable friendship got off to a rocky start.

They met at the virtual Gloria Shields workshop in 2021 the summer before their first year on the TPP staff. Randomly paired up in a breakout room, the two were assigned to write photo captions.

Karis’ first thought? Lydia was “rude.”

“I was asking her questions, and [Lydia] would nod or something, but the entire time she was just crouched over looking at her phone,” Karis said. “Like trying to be nonchalant.”

Lydia remembers it very differently.

“Karis brought an energy that was very intimidating,” Lydia said. “Like anyone who’s ever first met Karis knows that like, it’s very intimidating energy, especially the big juxtaposition with how she talked, and how she looked with glasses on, and then the little purple couch and the pink walls [of her room] around her.”

Although their first impressions were not promising, Karis and Lydia decided to give each other a second chance when they started working together on their first story.

And as two Chinese-American girls pursuing journalism — who loved the same Golden Dumpling House in Houston’s Chinatown, no less — they started to believe they might just be able to be friends.

It didn’t take long for the two to bond.

They sat together at the center of the newsroom sophomore year, balancing tight deadlines with clips of “The Voice.” They shared a bed when they traveled to the Future Problem Solver State Bowl, spending the day instructing elementary kids about how to prevent hurricanes and the night desperately trying to hold back giggles until they finally drifted off to sleep at 3:30 a.m.

Food was another source of bonding, from grocery shopping at H-E-B to failing to make a baked alaska to decorating macarons at Karis’ house.

When their good friend passed away, they clung even tighter to each other as they navigated the grief, spending months writing a memorial.

Three years later, they’ve become the “left and right side of the brain.”

To the newspaper advisor Lillian Harris, though, they are more alike than not, with their differences only helping them lead the staff better.

“Karis is a little more focused … very organized, [while] Lydia is fun and down to earth,” Harris said. “But they balance each other out really well, and they’re each other’s biggest cheerleader.”

To Harris, they are more than just her students: they are her “stepdaughters.”

“I will miss having their sweet, happy faces in class and just hearing about their lives,” Harris said. “We just have that relationship where I just really respect both of them.”

Harris views them with affection but also isn’t afraid to let them be independent and run the class how they want.

“They’re always one step ahead of me,” Harris said. “They lead by not being above others, but by being part of the team.”

Karis and Lydia create this teamwork through thousands of tiny moments. They have a playlist of everyone’s favorite songs, bake trays of cookies for “Fun Fridays” and make every latecomer do the “I’m a Little Teapot” dance at the front of the class.

“There are some people you can work with but you could never be close with, or someone who you’re really close with but you can never work professionally with them,” longtime friend and senior Cassandra Darmodjo said. “[But Karis and Lydia] have an amazing dynamic because they’re like the perfect mesh—they complement each other so well.”

This fall, Karis will be at Stanford University and Lydia at the University of Pennsylvania. Living so far from each other, they will have to adjust to their missing half.

“I’ll miss [Lydia’s] energy because I think it’s really hard to find people who are so energetic and so excited all the time about what they do but also very driven,” Karis said.

However, the two are confident their deep connection will remain even 2900 miles apart.

“When we get to college, I know it’s not gonna be, ‘oh I’m dropping you, let me go ahead and hang out with my California Stanford friends,’” Lydia said. “[Karis] cares. I’m very confident that we won’t [drift away] because of our connection here.”