In high school, friends tend to come and go and the role they play in your life can be either good or bad. College is where I learned what the elementary term “friendship” actually means.

During high school, most people establish some sort of group or clique who they spend the majority of their time with. You spend hours watching your favorite TV series together after school and you attend sporting events together.

Some people remain incredibly close with their high school friends after graduation and some don’t remain friends at all.

Regardless of the situation, what I learned is: College friends play a more important role in my life than I would have ever thought after leaving high school.

You are finally able to have a clean slate. There are no petty rumors following you and nobody knows about the stupid mistakes you made in high school that your peers wouldn’t let you live down.

Everyone sort of assumes you will arrive on campus and magically meet your perfect little friend group who will be your friends for happily ever after.

The truth is it’s awkward at first. There are swarms of new faces and you’re all forced to live in close proximity to each other as well as share a bathroom.

I lived with my current friends for a semester before I started hanging out with them. It happened one night when they wandered into my room and began telling me stories about a supposed ghost who lived in the dorm.

It was weird and not how I ever expected to meet my best friends but here we are over a year later, living, crying, succeeding and failing together.

College friends are more significant because you go through the worst and best part of your lives together. Your college friends become the people who will pick you up on a random street at 4 a.m. no questions asked when you reek of poor choices and then still let you sleep in their bed.

Most of the time no one really knows what they’re doing. We’re all just trying to figure out the mess that is our early 20s and it involves a lot of tears, laughs and “WTF am I doing with my life?” moments.

We’re all struggling to make it through school and into the real world but it involves a lot of missteps along the way. Through the good and the god awful they see it all. They don’t judge you when you order pizza for breakfast instead of going to your 8 a.m. class and they will act as proud parents when you ace an exam you worked your butt off studying for.

My college friends have helped me grow in a way high school friends never allowed me to. They are my most honest critics and biggest supporters. If you find yourself in the presence of people who truly make you a better person like this, hold on to them.