USC is home to 18 sets of twins in the freshman class alone. Some of them may blend into the crowd, but Peggy and Julie Smith definitely stand out.
The two twins are “mirror twins,” and they only exhibit minor differences. Julie is right-handed, but Peggy is left-handed. Julie is an inch taller than Peggy. When they were younger, they had overbites on opposite sides of their mouthes. Peggy learned to walk first, but Julie learned to talk first. Julie’s favorite color is pink, while Peggy prefers blue. Peggy is four minutes older. And occasionally, they like different foods.
Other than that, they’re just about the same.
Peggy and Julie, both first-year chemical engineering students, said the best part about being a twin is always having a “best friend” that they can trust.
“You get to go through everything together,” Peggy said. “And it’s a unique experience because a lot of people have siblings, but not very many people have the opportunity to do it together so close, so we’re very fortunate.”
One of the first things that people notice about Julie and Peggy is that they always match. They have the same shirt, jacket, jeans, backpack and even the same hairstyle.
When they were younger, they remember family members debating how their mother should dress them.
“When we were little our mom found us crying in our room, and she said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And we were just upset that people were telling us we should dress alike or we should dress different,” Julie said. “So she asked us, ‘What would you like to do?’ And ever since then, we’ve dressed the same, and it’s just been really fun.”
“Most of the time we take turns if the person wants to wear this this day, we say, ‘Well okay, the weather seems more good to wear that,’” Peggy started.
“We kind of compromise, too, if we want to go dressy one day then another day we don’t,” Julie added. “And sometimes — we don’t do it often — when we’re shopping, if we see a shirt, and it looks really good, but they only have in like two different colors, we may get it in different colors but the same style.”
The two girls even take a lot of the same classes. Their core classes are the same, and the only difference is that they take different liberal arts or elective courses. They generally find being in the same classes beneficial.
“We study a lot together,” Julie said. “I might be a little better than she is in one class, just by a couple of points, and so that helps. If you miss this on the notes one day, you can explain it to other person.”
Even in the large, 300-person lectures, professors always notice Peggy and Julie.
“It’s like a dead give away if you’re in class or not,” Peggy said. “Recently, a lot of the fun things have been the double takes, especially in college.”
Because they are so similar, the twins occasionally face jealousy and stereotypes.
“That sounds bad, but it’s the truth,” Peggy said. “It happens.”
It is also sometimes intimidating for others to approach them as potential friends because they are already so close to each other.
“Because you’re a twin, you have a best friend automatically,” Julie said. “I mean, we are best friends.”
These difficulties don’t have a big impact on the pair, however.
“We don’t really think that much of it because we think of how fortunate we are to be twins, and sometimes it makes us laugh because just the things that people say, they don’t really think about what they’re saying until afterwards,” Julie said. “It makes them sound really dumb because it makes them sound like they wanted to be a twin.”
Another result of their physical similarity is having people mix them up.
“You really have to know us in the face to tell us apart,” Julie began.
“Our close friends can tell us apart, but I think a lot of kids in our class can’t,” Peggy finished.
And sometimes, when they’re in the mood to, they’ll even switch places. They switched places the most during middle school, when they had different classes, especially on April Fools’ Day. They would tell their teachers they were switching, but then switch multiple times until everyone was confused.
“[Our teachers] wouldn’t call on us for the rest of the day because they didn’t know what name to call us,” Peggy said.
As aspiring chemical engineers, they hope to obtain internships and see how that progresses. They’ve also contemplated returning to school for doctorate degrees. But they’ve also braced themselves for the possibility of having to split up.
“We’re nervous, though, because it’s overwhelming to see two people and know that you have to hire two, so we’re kind of open that if one company wants one of us and another company wants another one of us, we’d be okay with that, because we’d have to just accept that,” Julie said. “We’re open, but we’re just waiting to see what will happen.”
But no matter what happens in the future, they are still focused on how their lives have been positively affected by each other.
“I feel like we’d still be close as sisters, but I don’t know if we would be both majoring in chemical engineering because we could do it on our own, but I feel like we help one another and encourage one another so much to study and achieve because we know that we can do it,” Julie said. “We’re better than we would be apart because it would be really different. It would be really weird, and I don’t think we would experience as much together.”
“I feel like we’re definitely stronger as twins,” Peggy added. “I don’t think we’d be as close either.”