A genius and unknown author once said, “Life doesn’t always introduce you to the people you want to meet. Sometimes life puts you in touch with the people you need to meet – to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you, and to gradually strengthen you into the person you were meant to become.” I recently heard this quote and it really got me thinking about the people in my life and how my relationships with people are constantly changing.

As a college freshman, I still have friends from high school and have made many new ones in college. However, once I went away, I realized that many of my friendships in high school were predominantly controlled by who I was surrounded by. My graduating class had a little over 500 kids, and while I knew most of them, many of them were the same kids I had been going to school with since elementary of middle school. Now, this is in no way a bad thing, it just limited my options for friends. When I went to college I started to realize that I may not have been as close with some of them as I thought I had. Now don’t get my wrong, a few of my best friends in the entire world are from high school, a few of which I think I will be friends with as long as I live. On the other hand, I think some of my other friends may have been more of friends by association, meaning that we were friends more because we went to the same school and had always been surrounded by each other, rather than actually having a lot in common. After coming to this realization not long after leaving for college, I made it my goal to search for real friends that loved me and whom I was genuinely alike. I also made it an important goal of mine to remove anyone who was toxic from my life and made me feel like less than I should.

These two goals are much easier said than done, but after being in college for less than a year I can already tell you that I have met some amazing people. I have made friends that love me and support me. Friends who I think I really am similar to. I have made friends from all over the country and it truly puts a smile on my face each and every day. I also have a select few friends from home that I have decided are sincerely important to me, ones that I hope to maintain friendships with for a very long time. I hope that all of my high school friends I have grown apart from are also finding all of this in college and that we all end up surrounded by friends who love us unconditionally and friends who we are truly alike.

However, I do know that I still have quite a bit of growing and changing to do and that people will continue to come into and out of my life. Regardless of who I am surrounded by now, every single person I have come across has had some role in sculpting me into who I am today. I am still searching for my group of people and hope to find it as I continue on through college. College has honestly opened so many doors for me and surrounded me with some extraordinary people. It is now my job to find those people. I feel so blessed to have this opportunity and I hope that everyone has the opportunity to find their group of people as well.