To my current roommate, who also became my first true friend my freshman year at Slippery Rock, you have been an incredible friend and have been an even greater support system when I really needed it. We’ve had some really bumpy times in the year I’ve known you but you were still an amazing friend and still listened to my endless stories and talking. My first year wasn’t the greatest, and I know you had a rough time with five other roommates, and I couldn’t wait to go home for the summer but I was even more excited to move into our dorm room this school year. We texted and snapchatted each other so much over the summer, trying to figure out what we were going to have in our room but the actual process of setting up our room was the most fun I had.
When I first came to college, I always imagined becoming fast friends with my roommate and setting up our room in a very girlish-dorm room type way, the kind of pictures you find on Pinterest, but that obviously was not the case for either of us. This year though, it felt that way. Before we even put our clothes in our dressers or hung up our shirts in our closets, we were hanging up posters, lights, and other decorations. We made so many trips to the store during the first weekends of the school year so we could buy paint and posters and random things to hang up in our room and make it ours. We never partied and we never went out drinking, we stayed in our dorm room watching movies or listening to the Disney radio on Pandora, painting and redecorating our room. Some weekends we would rearrange our furniture and make a fort with whatever blankets and sheets we had so we could watch Harry Potter movies and we wouldn’t take the fort down until Sunday, but it would always be grudgingly. Because of you, this year seems a little harder to move out and go back home. We made the dorm room our little home away from home that pulling down all our decorations and memories is a little heartbreaking. Hopefully next year living at the Rock Apartments with our two other friends will be even better and we’ll make more memories sitting around our living room, painting more things to go up on our walls.
To my friend who literally pushed himself into our little clique, you have been another great friend and support system for me but you’ve brought the greatest laughs. Freshman year, my first true memory of you was that weird kid who danced in the kitchenette area with the door wide open. After that, you somehow just started hanging out with us and we don’t know how you just became a permanent fixture in our group. But since you’ve joined us, we’ve had the biggest laughs and we’ve made bad situations into ones where we couldn’t stop laughing. To be completely honest, you have to be one of the weirdest people I know but that’s okay. I don’t think I would’ve wanted to be your friend if you didn’t liven up the day like you always do. With you a part of our little clique, we’ve had some crazy adventures and you’ve brought out my inner weirdo more than I would like to admit.
Whenever I was going through my fits of anxiety and I couldn’t seem to grasp what was real and what wasn’t, you always made me laugh or smile and it always brought me back. You’re probably the most awkward person in tense situations but you ease the tension with a joke. Of the three of us, you and I bicker the most and we never see eye-to-eye, but it never gets in the middle of our friendship and I think that’s the greatest thing ever. I love having someone around who points out what I said was stupid or who disagrees with me because it makes me humble and we always end up just laughing at our little bickerments. I hope these next two years we can have more little arguments and we can make fun of each other for the stupid things we do and say.
You both have made such a positive impact on my college years and I want to thank you for another great year. I thought that college was going to be the hardest thing for me and that I wouldn’t have a set of friends that I can call my best friends, but I did. I found two best friends that I want to tell my future kids about and visit whenever I can. You both made leaving home a little easier and you made Pennsylvania my home away from home. You may not realize it, but you both became more than just best friends to me. I know I don't say it often, but you guys really are my best friends and you've become family to me. So, thank you. Thank you for becoming my family.
