In high school, I had an amazing group of friends. We grew up together, faced every challenge together, laughed endlessly, made mistakes, cried—we did it all. Going into college, I was so nervous about finding people who would accept me for me. After all, my high school friends had seen the best and worst parts of me. I’m quirky, weird, have extremely limited comedic ability, and am the worst dancer known to man. When my friends were sending me off on the morning I left for college, their pieces of advice were:
“Don’t show your dance moves for at least 2 months to your new friends.”
“Refrain from telling any jokes until you know that they won’t be annoyed.”
“Maybe just tone it down for a little bit until you know you’ve found your people.”
I promise they were just joking around, but it was all actually pretty true. I am a whirlwind and sometimes that can scare people away. Needless to say, I was nervous. I am goofy, silly, emotional, stressed out, and am convinced that I have a minor cyclothymic disorder. I was hopeful that I could find people who accepted me for who I was and let me be completely myself. I had always heard that you meet your lifelong friends, bridesmaids, and forever people in college and I really desired to have that.
Even though it took some time, I can honestly say that no one is lying when they tell you that you meet some of your forever people in college. I have always been close with my best friends from home and some of them I have even known since I was five years old. I couldn’t even tell you when we all became so close, so I was nervous that I would surround myself with surface level friendships in college, since I felt so inexperienced. After all, how was I supposed to cultivate a deep friendship when I never really had to go out of my way to do that before? I have learned that you can’t force real friendships to happen, they just do. Whether it was at a prospective student event, orientation, a club meeting or conference, in line at the dining hall, during rush, on big/little reveal, in a class, at a football game—just a simple hello can be the start of a lifelong friendship.
College friends are the people you meet at an extremely vulnerable time in your life. We are all living far away from home, trying to figure out who we are, learning how to balance our time, facing new experiences, and learning hard life lessons. We never really have a clue what is going on, we are always hungry, and we are all just trying to get through the day without having an embarrassing moment. The friendships you make during such an awkward time in life truly have to become your family away from home.
College friends are the ones who incessantly show up unannounced, don’t judge you for making bad choices, never let you walk home alone, make fun of you out of love, cry with you when its necessary, give the best advice, take you out for ice cream after you fail a test, force you to go to the gym, order pizza with you at 3 a.m., hold you accountable with your faith, pick out your outfits, leave thoughtful notes everywhere, do your laundry for you when you have a bad day, cheer the loudest when you succeed, and always offer a good hug. They teach you how to love better, help you decide what to do with your life, study with you, buy you food, cuddle on the futon, save you from scary college boys, drive your car for you when you don’t feel like it, and support you no matter what. They never miss a coffee date, and their families become your own. The list of the amazing things my college friends do for me goes on and on. I never thought I could find people so quickly that I could be 100 percent my completely weird self with, but luckily I found people who act just as silly along with me.
I have great, lifelong friends at home, but I often wonder how I got through life for 18 years without all of the people I have met here. Truly, I feel like we have already missed out on so much time. But then I remind myself about how much fun the rest of my life will be with these sweet friends by my side. The list of memories we’ve made in just a few short months is never ending—I can’t imagine how many more we have yet to create. Here’s to my college people, my forever people.
