High school was full of fun times and activities that left me feeling like I had the best friends I could ever ask for. Yet, from freshman to senior year, I slowly began to realize that in high school, many of the friends you make simply because you spend five days a week together all the time. They always say that high school is where you make the greatest memories and have the best time of your life; yet for me, it wasn't. I did make some awesome memories with people, but I slowly drifted away from so many of them as the years progressed and I couldn't really stop it. High school to me was a pressure to find yourself and decide what you want to do with your life.

The social norms in high school were so much on being in the cool crowd and doing things that made you look cool. There were kids who said they never cared, and I'll admit, I was one of them. Yet, despite my denials of wanting to be seen as cool, I did. I wanted to be friends with and know everyone in the building no matter what. Yet, society forced us into specific groups without our knowing it. There were "the jocks," "the preps," "the nerds" — all the typical groups you see in high school television shows. By my senior year, I was sick of seeing those defining lines all over and had retreated into a shrinking circle of friends. While everyone I was friends with decided to go to the same colleges or ones that were close in vicinity, I was hoping to go to a place where I could start fresh and not worry about needing to fit in with a specific group.

Coming to college, I was highly apprehensive about it all. I had come out to school by myself, with no prior friends along to fall back to in case I couldn't make a friend. The first few days I was actually doubting myself, and wondering whether I should have gone to school with friends from high school. When I met the first of my best friends, she had come up to me because she thought I looked friendly and cool. The two of us hit it off immediately, and we've been close ever since. She showed me that I was perfect being who I was and I didn't need to take on a fake persona to make people like me. I feel like that is a lot of what high school wanted you to do: be someone you aren't so you fit in. If we spent more time being ourselves and appreciating others for who they are. The pressure to conform always felt so much stronger in high school than in college. In college, just about everyone becomes friends with someone you wouldn't imagine yourself being friends with.

In high school, I was always the friend who was seen as "the funny one," or "the one who was always smiling." Because of those labels placed on me during high school, I never felt like I had the right to be anything other than happy. On days when school was so rough I just wanted to retreat into my own little world and take a nap, people would tell me I had to smile and be happy for their sake and not my own. The second best friend I met showed me that I don't owe any of my emotions to anyone at all. I could go to her feeling elated and over the moon about something, yet I could also go to her when I felt like nothing in life was going right. No matter what mood I was in, she never expected me to be happy for her sake. She helped me understand that all emotions are important and it's human nature to feel things other than happiness. Where high school made me push away all negative feelings, college taught me to let them show when I needed.

I never believed I would find the closest friends I have today in college. Of course, I still have friends from high school that are as dear to me as my college friends are. Older people always said high school was the best four years of your life, but I've found that out of my three years in college, they've brought about the greatest times and memories that I will carry with me for years to come. Once you find those people you can really connect with, the days seem to fly by in a blur of happy memories. There is nothing wrong with going to the same school with friends from high school; and even still, it's great to continue to cherish and value your friendships created in high school. For some, however, they need to branch out and discover who they are without the confine and memories of high school holding them back.