Happy approximate 8th birthday, GroupMe! Students, parents, and even strangers everywhere adore you! Tell your parents, Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht, that the world is grateful for your founding!

But on a serious note, GroupMe has completely changed the lives of people everywhere. Take incoming college freshman for example. The specific chat I am referring to, LSU '22, has around 370 members in it. This gives members a large group of people who may soon become their closest friends. GroupMe allows for people of every part of the country, or world, to come together in one space.

Our LSU '22 group has introduced me to some of my (now) closest friends and allows us to learn more about the people who will be entering college with us. Some people even used the group to find their future roommate. Within this large group, we have even been able to make smaller groups for things like our dorm, our floor in the dorm, even our major. The major GroupMe will come in handy throughout college since we will all be taking the same classes, so we will be able to assist one another if needed.

It is also a great way to communicate with groups of an organization. My first group was summer of 2016 when I attended a workshop for student council. While there our family group decided we didn't want to lose touch so we created a GroupMe. The following summer my new family group decided to do that, too.

This encouraged me to start one for our school's student council as a way to get messages across to them rather than finding everyone individually. I also know the parents of athletes use GroupMe for their sports teams to spread information about events!

Not to mention it is great for sites like Odyssey! The LSU community's group is full of some of the most open-minded, inspiring women I've ever had the privilege of communicating with! As a whole, our community is more of a family than anything.

Though, we are aware of some controversial instances regarding GroupMe. One of those being whether or not it is considered "cheating" when using groups for classes. In my opinion, as well as many others, using resources such as GroupMe for classes is a great idea. As long as there is a sense of responsibility for what is going on in these groups, they should simply be viewed as a resource. It allows students to ask their peers questions that they may be too afraid to ask a TA or professor.

So here's a happy birthday/thank you to GroupMe and its creators. From users everywhere, you'll never understand how thankful we are!