People say you\u2019re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not big on quantifying my relationships, but I do think your community shapes how you see and value yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the feeling you get after a great hangout with a friend \u2014 a little skip in your step, a new sparkle in the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A small smile spreads across your face. You pause and realize how lucky you are to spend even a few hours with someone genuine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A month ago, I sat across from my best friend Sarah at a local off-campus coffee shop. We met the first week of freshman year and have been close ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s my constant \u2014 the person I turn to for the daily minutiae. Our conversations range from \u201cLove Island UK\u201d recaps to guessing who we just saw on campus to talking through major life decisions.<\/p>\n
Over the past four years, we\u2019ve built a weekly tradition of grabbing lunch or coffee to debrief our busy schedules. She\u2019s a cognitive science major, and I\u2019m on the management consulting track, so we rarely share classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We both get excited in the days leading up to our hangouts. I always joke that I won\u2019t touch my phone for the hour we\u2019re together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our friendship feels like a locked vault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We trade stories, sharing funny anecdotes and laugh over the smallest details \u2014 even outfit choices. Sometimes, just making eye contact with Sarah is enough to make me smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I seek her opinion because I value her perspective. I want to know how she\u2019d approach a challenge if she were in my shoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To me, that\u2019s the mark of good company: someone who cheers you on while giving you space to shine. Someone you can be completely open with, without overthinking your next thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019m 22, I\u2019ve come to appreciate both the friendships that have grown with me and the ones that have remained since the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was three, I sat in circle time next to a blonde girl with a short haircut. Eighteen years later, we shared a croissant beside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s lived in Spain, Germany and Ireland, but I still think of her as the Kara who lived eight minutes from my house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We commiserated over high school gym class and celebrated together as we opened our college acceptance letters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We once shared a school parking lot. Now, we wait for holiday breaks to reunite in our hometown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a friendship that\u2019s spanned nearly my entire life \u2014 one rooted in my past that continues to shape my future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She calls me out when I\u2019m too much of a people pleaser and not enough myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This past winter break, we fell back into one of our usual routines: a drive to a local Italian sandwich shop, a cappuccino from the drive-thru and honest conversations about the past semester.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I looked over at her in my passenger seat and admired the person she\u2019s becoming \u2014 worldly, curious and deeply loyal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Good company won\u2019t always agree with you. It won\u2019t offer easy approval just to keep the peace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kara has taught me that the people worth keeping are the ones who challenge you. Even when it\u2019s easier to stay quiet, they\u2019ll tell you what you need to hear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year, I\u2019ve realized that a meaningful friendship can form when you least expect it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In September, I sat down at my final opening meeting for The Brown and White next to someone whose name I\u2019d heard before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We exchanged pleasantries and quickly fell into conversation that felt like it belonged to old friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was effortless.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coming into senior year, I expected my friendships to stay the same. I didn\u2019t think Olivia would become one of my closest friends in my final year at Lehigh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, I can\u2019t imagine my life without her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company you keep should push you to be better. It should inspire you to want more for yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each of these relationships is different, but all of them have shaped who I am.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People say you\u2019re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. I\u2019m not big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,4520],"class_list":{"0":"post-165467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-4-min-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-edit-desk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}