In my sophomore year of high school, my mom’s job moved us from Virginia to Kentucky. The whole moving experience, in a word, sucked. Not only did I have to leave my friends who I’d known for so long, I had to leave behind a city that I loved.

At the time, it seemed like that was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me (I was a bit of a drama queen at the time). But if I had the opportunity to go back in time, I’d tell myself to relax and embrace the new surroundings because the move was actually going to change me for the better.

The move taught me how to better adapt in new surroundings. My first high school was crowded and evenly mixed with all kinds of people flooding into the halls every day. My second school, however, was much calmer, and while it was diverse in its own right, most of the students there grew up in the area. I had to befriend people who’d known each other for most of their lives. While that wasn’t easy, it made me realize how grateful I was for all the friends I did have.

And the value I placed on friendship only increased when I moved to Kentucky. My Virginia friends were hundreds of miles away, but I was learning to take advantage of my week-long summer visits. Those short visits and reliance on social media weren’t the preferred method of communication, but it was what I needed to stay in touch with the only friends I had back home. At the time, I didn’t realize how useful doing this would be.

Now that I’m in college, I’m away from most of my high school friends in Kentucky and Virginia. My phone is how I stay in touch with most of my friends now, and since I’ve been doing it since I was a sophomore in high school, I’ve become a pro. It doesn’t even faze me anymore. And instead of moping about not seeing my friends all the time, I’ve learned how to just enjoy the moments I do have with them even more.

I've even become pretty good at making friends and meeting new people. Since I had to enter a new place without knowing anyone, I also had to reach out to people, a skill I wasn't very good at before moving to a new school. In college, with every new semester comes classes where there are no familiar faces, but at least I've already had practice dealing with that. I realize that college could have been a lot more intimidating for me if I wouldn't have moved and gone to two high schools.

I’m not going to say that moving in the middle of my high school career was the greatest thing ever because that certainly isn’t true. While I’m grateful for how the experience changed me, it still sucked. When I think about all of the friends, opportunities, and lessons that moving gave me, I realize that it doesn’t matter if it sucked at first. Life is going to suck sometimes, but it’s what we learn from the sucky experiences that prepare us for the incredible ones.