I was not expecting to meet such amazing people at Basic Camp. Recently I have been going through a mid college life crisis. The friendships that I tried so hard to keep have fallen through and all the friends I made as a freshmen are no longer in my life.

I never really believed that your friends are a reflection of who you are; until I was surrounded by a bunch of shitty ‘friends’. I realized how toxic and draining the friendships where. It took me a while, but I finally started surrounding myself with people that share the same values as me.

“I don’t really like volunteering, I don’t know, my dad wants me to but I don’t like to” was a comment an old friend once made. I thought that was okay, in my naive mind, I thought I could be friends with anyone, no matter how shallow because shallowness has depth. But that goes against everything that I am trying to be. I have based my entire life in helping others and giving back to the community yet I am surrounding myself with people that don’t like to volunteer? I don’t make sense. I then realized, that it has taken me a while to detach from everything I grew up knowing.

I grew up thinking that it was okay to be a shitty friend. I was constantly surrounded by them. My “friends” would not invite me to certain things, would ignore me in front of certain people, hook up with the each other’s ‘guys’, or plainly would not be there when needed. Then I moved away to a new city, and I wasn’t surrounded by those people, and it was amazing! But as time passed, even though some ‘friends’ in Chicago would not do those things, they would do other sketchy things. I learned how to maneuver through the red flags that I would sometimes ignore. I wanted to believe that people are more than just the rude comments they say and that people actually have substance, I wanted to believe it so bad, that I ignore all the warning signs and decided to see the best when there was no best. I genuinely want to believe that we are not all dirt bags, and we can care for each other. But those people are so far and few, it’s scary.

At camp, I met people that were not only giving up one month of their summer to be there, but also had a moral compass. It reassured me, that no matter the situation, there are people that have a good heart. I had roommates that cared about me, and did not expect anything in return. We had each others backs and worked as a team because if we did not, Drill Sergeant Vu would make us do pushups until dawn. “If the mind doesn’t comprehend, the body must pay”. Aside from the physical punishments, we started seeing how rewarding it was. We all did not get along, but we respected each other to know that we were stuck with each other, and this was our platoon, and we would be stupid not to make the best out of it. We learned that we don’t look out for each other because we have to, or because it’s the ‘right’ thing, but because in doing so, it allows us to be to grow in a way that cannot be achieved without it, it allows us to be free of the things that weigh us down. It allows us to give, without expecting to get, and because it is the right thing, it became muscle memory.

It showed me, how happiness can be achieved, and it doesn’t come in a FedEx box with a price tag. It comes with doing the hard thing, and embracing the moments that suck the most. It made me aware, that not everyone in this weird millennial sucks. And how okay it is to cut away toxic people, and only feeling happiness is not too bad after all. We all have potential to be great, and be the best version of ourselves, if we cut away from the things that are disctracting us.