Living, breathing, and spending every waking (and sometimes sleeping) minute with college friends is truly an amazing experience. It brings adventure and love to the repetitive schedule of college. Spending 9 months with these "college friends" I cherish times that comes to a quick halt when summer arrives. With the business of summer, we forget just how much we miss our college friendships.

The beginning of school and the end of summer brings many things. Football season, changing leaves, and most importantly the reunions with our friends that we have not seen all summer. This reunion is the start of a new season of memories and laughter to be remembered for years to come. These are the friends that we will talk about to our children. They are our family away from blood and our home away from our address. We figure out how to adult together. We mature in our identity and strengthen our characteristics together.

Coming back to your college town and seeing everyone moving into apartments is one of the greatest feelings. Everything that brings you peace about college is finally falling back into place. For the first time in our lives, we can truly pick our friends. Up until college, our friends have been based on geography and most of the time the same friends from high school were the same ones we met in middle school and even elementary school. In college, you can practically handpick your friends, which I think is totally awesome! This is the first, and only, time in our life that we will be exposed to this environment. Once we start our career, our new friends will almost be confined to our workplace.

For this reason, reunions with our college friends are priceless. For these four years in our life, we have the opportunity to meet friends from all over the country and all over the world. We are able to spend the entire year with these friends. To grow in knowledge and increase in friendship.

I am so thankful for the end of summer because that means I get to see my college friends super soon.