Ah, high school. The four crazy years of Friday night football games, endless busy work, homecomings, and so much more—a whirlwind, to say the least. It’s a strange thing to look back on: countless memories, friendships, and accomplishments suddenly seem so far away. It’s even stranger to take a hard look at my life now, compared to how it was back then. While I’ve learned that a lot of things really do come and go, my high school friends are people I’ll never forget. Regardless of where we are now, the lessons we learned from each other will stick with us forever. Here are four of the most important things my high school friends taught me:

1. What I need in a friendship. Let’s face it: high school is a roller coaster. Through all of the sports seasons, proms and crazy relationships, you’re constantly surrounded by chaos and an impressive amount of drama. Through it all, however, you figure out what kind of people you need—the ones who listen to you complain about the most unimportant things and offer you advice, even though nobody actually knew what they were talking about. While these people may not follow you to college, you’ll find yourself looking for others who have similar traits.
2. That it’s perfectly OK to be confused about the future. Meeting new friends in college was so exciting for me. But as soon as academics were brought up, I was suddenly surrounded by people who were going to be biology or psychology majors—and they were so sure of it. I was scared that I didn’t have an answer to give back to them. But then I thought back to my high school friends. Most of us didn’t have a clue what we were going to be doing, even though we pretended like we did. They taught me it’s okay to be the “undecided” one, because everything really does have a strange way of coming together.
3. How friendship isn’t validated by talking every day. Graduating high school was weird. The people I had grown up with all went in different directions, but we told each other we’d keep in touch and talk as often as we could. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Fortunately, everyone understood. Life is busy. We’re all busy. That never really changes. Talking to everyone you know and love from high school is impossible: but I know that if I needed someone to talk to, they would be waiting on the other end of the phone for me: and I would do the same for them.
4. That the little things really do matter. Some of my best high school memories were from doing the simplest things. Driving around town playing music or prank calling people brought me, and still brings me, a surprising amount of happiness. My high school friends and I never did anything crazy or out of control: but we laughed a lot, cried a lot, and made the most out of those four short years.

So, in conclusion: here’s to you, high school friends. No, I haven’t posted a picture of you on Facebook in quite some time. Yes, the last time I texted you was way too long ago. But I hope you know that every time an old memory floats through my mind, you’re the reason I’m smiling—thank you for that.