Friends

I won't claim to have always been great at picking my friends. I suffer from what my cousin Lisa calls the Eaton Family curse: I have had the habit of surrounding myself with people who are not as good to me as I am to them. The first two years of my life here in Winona was spent with two people who are incredibly negative. They were very much the type of people who want nothing but to take and never give.

I am lucky though. I realized all this and distanced myself. I have also found great friends in the most unlikely of places...my old roommates and a group of girls I once judged without actually knowing them. I don't claim to be good at living with people. All evidence to the contrary at this point. However, I decided to get to know my roommates last year and they have turned out to be awesome friends. They actually call and want to go out and do things, something I used to have to brow-beat the other two to do. They were also there for me when my boyfriend left for the summer, while the deadbeats pretended it didn't happen because their boyfriends were around.

I also made a new group of friends who are other girls that are dating football players. I didn't get along with the other football girlfriends last year, which I take blame for because I was always very aloof and brought my own friends to parties. I met a girl in some of my classes last year who was also dating a defensive player and we became friends. She introduced me to two more girls who have made this semester one to remember. I have had more fun on road trips and happy hours with these girls than I have ever had with a group of girls. They are also very considerate. When I took my GRE, I was planning to go to happy hour with two of the girls that night. When I got there, they had a tiny cake that was being crushed by those cheesy big number candles they had bought to proclaim my score. It was incredibly touching.

I am a firm believer in the philosophy that in order to fully appreciate the people around you, you would have had to had it very badly before. And trust me, I very much appreciate these girls...