I am a lucky person. I don’t acknowledge that very often, but this weekend has been a prime example of why I should. This time last year and even two years ago I was not very happy. That’s not to say I was depressed or anything, but there were long stretches of time where I felt down and unmotivated to do anything. Something was missing. Most of my friends were gone and there was some family drama going on that affected me more than I let on.

Fast forward to February 15, 2015.

My best friend Alex Stadnik made a video that to this day will make me tear up. It was a video asking me to come back to UND. He made a lot of good points about why coming back would be better for me than staying at home. He also used "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith at the end which I think was a dirty move because he knew that would destroy me.

Long story short I chose to come back and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.

Since I’ve returned to good old Grand Forks I’ve been happier than I’ve been in a long time. I’m living with Alex and another great guy named Steve. There is a picture of the three of us freshmen year at a hockey game that I love because we would never have guessed that we would be living together three years later. I met most of the people I hang out with freshmen year, but never really got the chance to become good friends with a lot of them. I’ve gotten that chance this year.

There are so many things this year that have made it amazing: night games, bars, always having someone to watch football with, etc. The thing that got me really thinking about how lucky I am was this weekend though. We got a group together and went to a pumpkin patch. It has a corn maze, a haunted house, a nature path; it’s nothing special, but it was incredibly fun because of the people I was with. We played tag in the corn maze, took pictures with pumpkins and looked at chickens for like 15 minutes because we thought they were funny.

Let me describe some of the characters that I have the privilege of seeing almost every day. There’s a short guy that threatens me on a daily basis and shares my love of super hero TV shows. There’s a guy with a creepy mustache that insults me one second and then sends me pictures/videos of baby animals the next second. There’s a bearded guy that says some of the most ridiculous things you’ll ever hear in your life, a girl that you would swear is drunk even when she is stone cold sober, and a girl that is a good eight inches shorter than me but quite frankly scares me more than any guy I’ve ever met. Those last three live together too. It’s a circus, but I love it.

This article is really a thank you to all of those people.

Thank you for making me feel like I’m part of the group. Thank you for helping me understand what college is supposed to be. Even if I didn’t mention you specifically you know who you are.

I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be a part of such a great group of people.

Thank you so much.