It can be difficult to find a good group of friends, no matter how social you are.

With many of us being in college, the work force, or the military, life has changed in at least one aspect since leaving high school. Sometimes that means good-byes to some of your friends and acquaintances taking off on their own path. But as we all know, there's a huge difference between acquaintance and best friend. A difference between casual conversation and a legitimate conversation. There's that one guy who loves to talk about how elite your least favorite quarterback is and you just sit there and nod like a moron just to get through the five minutes you're behind him in the dining hall line. But then there's the boys, and the boys just get you. This article is dedicated to those studs.

You may not always collectively agree with your best friends, whether that's a genuine disagreement or a sarcastic opinion to piss off one another, but you always maintain a mutual understanding of each other. These guys had your back when your ex-girlfriend had you down, and they had your back as wingmen for the following weekend's outing. They're brutally honest with you about your taste in women, it might be a tough pill to swallow at times, but you know they're right.

These are the guys that keep everything that's said amongst each other discreet. But those hilarious jokes and legendary tales of nights out during the school year, wild encounters and absurd happenings live on forever, as they rightfully should. Someday, we'll all have wives and children that we will owe all of our responsibilities and attention to. We're going to need a lot of memories to reminisce on in a group chat to get us through the work week. College is the lay away time between high school and the real world, where we individually prepare to build the foundations for the rest of our lives. That being said, life doesn't revolve around work. We have nothing without our memories of the good times, lessons learned from the bad times, and the people we meet along the way.

You may not be able to pinpoint the exact moment that the boys all became family, I know I definitely can't, but it's easy to tell how much you grow individually alongside your crew growing altogether. When every player's morale is high, the team chemistry overall is through the roof. Coming from such a diverse community to an even more diverse college, the friends I've made at UMass have had a huge impact on me in a short amount of time, but I'm nothing without my boys from Brockton, Mass.

When you grow up in such a distinct and large city like mine, you have to find a way to make it small for yourself; to fit in and live life on your own terms. My friends have stuck together through all of our own individual growth and experiences, and though we're not the same kids we were when we all banded together, the one thing that remains the same is the unbreakable loyalty we have to each other. We've managed to all do our own thing and still be able to get together like time hasn't passed since high school. That's what having best friends is all about: support and ignorance of what's unimportant.

Here's to the boys, whoever you may be, for being good people to their friends. I'm pretty sure there's no official time period where we become men, but I'm also pretty sure we'll all be kicking back "with the boys" for life. Never forget to appreciate the little things like a warm beer, a Sox loss, and a lopsided ratio. It gives us something to laugh about via text before picking up the kids from school.