We will forever look up to our favorite besties of the Hills as the soul sisters we always wanted. No one will ever be as perfect as Lauren, as fun as Lo, as cool as Audrina, as hardworking as Whitney, as honest as Kristen, or as whipped as Heidi.

If you were too busy keeping up with those Kardashians (bless your heart) and didn’t culture yourself in a more respectable reality, The Hills is a spin-off from a previous reality show, Laguna Beach and centers around Lauren Conrad – the girl-next-door type who moves to Los Angeles with her best friend in search of a new career, a new relationship, and a new life.

As cliché the plot comes off, it ended up being exactly what the world needed. We needed to see real friends in their ever-haunting twenties navigating through a place as fast-paced a backdrop as L.A. It was refreshing to see girls we could actually relate to who had about as normal an upbringing as the rest of us (sans the picturesque beach town neighborhood, a lavish Benz, and a multi-million dollar home, of course).      

Despite that the last couple of seasons were clearly too scripted to be real, we couldn’t keep ourselves from watching all the drama that went down among these girls. Whether it was about how not one girl could resist the charm of Brody Jenner or “the Spencer issue,” Lauren and her well groomed friends made it through the fire looking even better than before.   

Now that Netflix robbed us from the opportunity to binge-watch our favorite reality show, it’s become more apparent than ever to recall those realer than real lessons we learned with Lauren and her crew about careers, friendships, and of course – boys.   

1.) Don’t ever sacrifice a friendship for the sake of your flesh-bearded boyfriend. The ongoing plot line that spanned about five seasons was how Heidi chose Spencer over Lauren – no matter what. And for those five seasons, we would all cross our fingers hoping that Heidi would come to her senses and just dump the loser. You could tell how difficult it was for Lauren to come to terms with how her friendship was falling apart before her very eyes, but you had to #staystrong for her anyway. In the end being the class act L.C. is, she still attended Heidi and Spencer’s wedding and wished the couple well.     

2.) Even the most seemingly glamorous job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At some point while watching the Hills, we all wished we were aspiring fashion designers interning at Teen Vogue, but Lauren and her co-worker friend, Whitney, taught us that being a couple of interns is still the bottom of the work totem-pole. 

Then again, being shipped off to Paris on a moment’s notice isn’t all that bad, which reminds me…   

3.) Always go to Paris. Remember when Lauren turned down Paris in order to spend her summer to fix her relationship with Jason?! Then even after she tried to work on things with Jason, they still ended up breaking up after that summer?! We all had to endure Teen Vogue Editor, Lisa Love’s, endless taunting of how Lauren was “the girl who didn’t go to Paris”?!

Thankfully, our girl learned her lesson and went to Paris the following summer with Whitney. In Paris, we learned some other smaller but no less important lessons there – the proper way to pronounce “Givenchy”, how it’s totally okay to burn a hole in a designer dress with your straightener and how it’s completely safe for some random French guy to whisk you off on a motorcycle to visit the Eiffel Tower.   

I mean, it’s Paris.  

4.) There’s a slight chance there’s going to be a Justin Bobby in your life. That all too mysterious guy who you know absolutely nothing about, and yet you’re still in love with him? He’s such a mystery that no one knows if his name is Justin or Bobby? I mean, the guy electively chooses not to shower, but you just dismiss it for the sake of, “his art”? While you’re falling madly in love with this leather-toting biker, all of your friends are trying to knock some sense into you. Naïve little Audrina tried to heed to her friends’ warnings until she shamefully accused Lauren of hooking up with Justin because, you know, that’s believable.     

5.) There’s definitely going to be a Brody in your life. There’s always that one guy you can never get enough of, and for Lauren, it seemed like her man-kryptonite was Brody Jenner himself. Now, Brody was no stranger to the dating scene in L.A. as he dated about half the female population in California (including Lauren’s high school rival, Kristen Cavallari). Although it appeared that Lauren was the one who truly stole his heart, for the better part of four seasons they played the whole “will they/won’t they” game and toyed with our emotions.  

But we scored in scripted bliss upon watching the alternate ending for the series finale years after the show’s end to find out that despite Kristen’s return and her revelation of her true feelings towards Brody, he chose Lauren instead.   

It feels like we went through the ringer with these girls. We shed a couple of black tears with Lauren through some pretty low points in her life, but partied at Les Deux with her in times of triumph. Although there were some less than relatable scenarios in the show (and I’m only referring to Heidi’s post plastic surgery drama), there’s always an episode that we can refer to when we need some honest girl advice, or when you just want to hang out with some fun ladies when you don’t feel like being with your actual friends.