A Happy Medium by Erin Murtaugh

Friendship. Every friendship has its ups and downs. If you’re reading this, I hope you have at least one person you can truly consider a friend and share personal things with. Everyone needs a friend to lean on.

I went to St. Theodore Catholic School for elementary school. There, classes were very small. At the time, my friends were a tight-knit group of girls in my grade. We did everything together.

Once we all moved up to Southwest Middle School, we split into new circles of friends. With more people our age around us, we were able to find more friends with whom we had more things in common. The St. Theodore girls always stayed friends, but we just grew into different people and made new friends.

Then came Albert Lea High School. As if teens don’t go through enough change going to middle school and then being put in the high school, guess again. You learn even more about who you are as an person in high school. Opportunities to join new clubs, sports and other activities come up. Being involved in things that your friends might not be makes another chance to meet new people and make new friends.

It’s kind of funny how many groups of friends I have bounced through in high school because of my interests changing. It’s a little overwhelming every time you shift into a new friend group, but chances are if you go into a new one, it’s because your new friends are even more like you than your old friends were.

Seeing all my friends from high school posting about their new friends in college is awesome. People always say the friends you make in college are the ones you have for the rest of your life. I have made a few new friends since starting college that I hope I have a long time.

Sometimes it feels like you’re alone in the change of friends while growing up. If you ever feel that way, believe me, you are not alone. No matter how many times you find yourself transitioning through friends, you’ll always find yourself with stronger relationships than before.

I’d like to give a little appreciation shoutout to my best friend, Kari, for always being there. You’re straightforward, honest, caring and one of the most fun people I’ve ever met. Thank you for being the best friend a girl could ask for.

 

Albert Lea High School graduate Erin Murtaugh is a first-year student at Rochester Community and Technical College. She can be reached at murtaugh.erin@gmail.com.