Dear college best friends,

A few weeks ago, I wrote an open letter to my high school best friends because I was missing them like crazy while I was about to go home for Thanksgiving Break. But, lately it has occurred to me that while writing that article I may have left some people out. While my high school friends are amazing, I can't forget about y'all, the people in college who take care of me now, who I sometimes even think of as my family.

We may not have all grown up together. We're all from different cities and states, but now we're all in the same place, trying to figure out college and how to balance the different aspects of our lives. And thank god I have y'all to do it with. Though you may not have known me inside and out all my life, you definitely know me inside and out now. You've held me when I've cried, listened to my stupid pondering when I can't sleep after a long night out. We've piled into twin beds together to comfort each other when things aren't going great. We've spent endless hours in the library together, glancing over at each other in our shared agony, thankful we aren't suffering alone.

But what we have spent even more hours doing is making happy memories. We wake up on Saturday mornings, get ready, and head off to the tailgates and the football games. We take the long walk down to the Dean Smith Center together to cheer on our basketball team, laughing the whole time. Sometimes we decide we want to have a girl's night in, and we all spread pillows and blankets all over the floor and lay down next to each other. We've all even fallen asleep like that. We order whole pizzas and laugh while we eat them because we know we need to hit the gym tomorrow. We go out on Saturday nights, and sometimes school nights (sorry, Mom). We hold each other's hands while we dance, and we pull each other up onto the stages at the parties because we're having a great enough time that we think everyone needs to witness it.

And I don't ever forget that y'all have seen me at my worst and love me anyway. You know how crazy I am about my grades, you know that I'm a basket case over nothing half the time, and you know how much I care about things that don't mean anything at all. I am so grateful to have found each and every one of y'all. So grateful, in fact, that sometimes I find myself looking around laughing with y'all and feeling like the luckiest girl in the world. Then I think to myself, "What would I do without them?"

Here's hoping I never have to find out.

Love,

Your new college friend