One of the greatest aspects of college is the opportunity to meet new people. I'm sure you may have heard time and again that college is the place where you can find your significant other and your life-long friends. During this transitory time in life, you also supposedly learn to appreciate the old relationships between family and childhood friends. Realistically, how possible is it to meet new friends but keep the old?

The Freshman Fifteen

I bet many of us can remember that car ride to campus freshman year. You're ready to start a new chapter of your life, and most of us envisioned having that "perfect" freshman year roommate. However, not many people can say that's exactly how it worked out. Sometimes freshman year friends are the ones you clung to because you were scared to be alone – the friends whose doors you knocked on to ask how to work the washing machine or how to make easy mac. These are the friends you keep around to avoid being homesick and because they are so kindhearted.

I would like to call these people the "forced friends." The forced friends are the ones you met via the suggested (forced) open door policy and the ones who made sure you never had to eat dinner alone those first few months of school. Deep down you know you never truly connected with them the way you had in previous friendships, but you were grateful for having new friends in your life regardless. During this time you questioned whether or not those were your forever friends that everyone said you would meet in college, and maybe they were, maybe they weren't.

Sophomore Sweethearts

Sophomore year is the time you finally work up the courage to start to explore all the other relationships the college environment provides. You're more comfortable going to late night events, you now live on a coed floor (you maybe even started making occasional appearances at off-campus houses on Friday nights). Those forced freshman friendships have started fading, classes have gotten harder and you've started realizing which people you may want in your life forever.

We call these people your "sophomore sweethearts." Maybe it's those few girls that you can't even remember how you all became so close or those guys who after every class you found hanging out in a dorm, video game controllers in hand. No matter who they were or how it all started, you began to find those people who have the ability to touch your heart when you couldn’t even manage to stand on your own two feet.

Jumbled Juniors

As the reality of the real world starts creeping up on your still very adolescent self, you truly need to lean on those sophomore sweethearts who have managed to stick by you. Junior year friends consistently help you through those nights you spend sobbing over grades and the future, and they are also are the ones who inspire and motivate you more than you ever thought possible. They're the ones who yell at you to get out of bed and get to class, while the next day the two of you can be cuddling in bed and refusing to move.

These are the ones who hold you when your heart is broken and prop you up when it's time to stand on your feet again. These friends you can argue with and scream at, but you still know that no matter what they'll be there cheering you on. To put it simply, you can no longer imagine your life without them.