Girls have so many friends throughout their lifetime. There are the kids you grow up with, the girls you spend your awkward middle school years with, the friends that you make through high school, and then the best friend that you meet in college.

Except the last one is different. This friend isn’t like your other best friends. She isn’t like the girls you see only when you go home or the guys you hangout with only to watch the Super Bowl. This friend isn’t close with you because you have to see her in the same hallways everyday and she doesn’t live next door. This friend is the one that you chose not out of convenience, but because you’re at least 120% sure you two were separated at birth.

Before coming to Michigan State, I started out at a smaller school on the west side of Michigan. My best friend and I connected instantly since we were both from Texas, yet somehow found this tiny school in the Midwest and decided to make it our new home. We didn’t become friends because we had class together, and we weren’t roommates. We became best friends by putting in actual effort to see each other and have as many weird college adventures as we could in the one semester we were together. This best friend is definitely the best thing I’ve gotten out of college so far. A year and a half later and an hour apart, we still FaceTime for more than 2 hours every night and see each other every weekend.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that your college friends become your best friends simply because they don’t have to be. It’s so easy to ignore someone or make excuses to not hangout when you’re in college. You don’t have to see anybody that you don’t want to because the campus is so big and everyone is so busy. There are so many different types of people and things that you were never exposed to in high school. College is the greatest time of our lives, but possibly the craziest as well. Having a lifelong best friend by your side through all the stress, parties, boyfriends, failed exams and psycho roommate stories just makes it that much better.

Finding your best friend in college may happen immediately or take some time, but you’ll definitely know when it happens. You two can sit in your dorm completely sober on a Saturday night and never get bored just watching Netflix and eating Chinese food. You and your best friend have by far the best, worst and funniest stories when you decide to go party hopping. You consider each other family and probably also call their mom your mom, as well. But most importantly, this type of best friend is the one that you see standing behind you at the altar holding your bouquet and being the God mother to your future babies.