md friends

I realize the only real "writing" post I've done was my first one, so I'm trying to even that out. I was on a road trip with Dan B. chatting it up, and we got on the topic of friends and God and all the deep stuff of life.
I came to the realization that out of the eleven places I applied to for college I figured UMD would have been the least likely to provide me with amazing friends. And yet, I firmly believe that out of the eleven colleges, no other place could have provided me with more amazing friends than UMD did. And I don't even feel like I"m being generous to UMD. That's honestly how I feel.
And I want those friends to know that. There's a lot of you, but hopefully you all know you're in that group (except Mason...sorry man I never really liked you). Even those of you who haven't become great friends, you've still been a great presence in my life. I've been surrounded by such top notch personalities, and I'm so grateful that they've all had a chance to rub off on mine.
I thought particularly of the Crazy House, and how it's in retrospect that I can now start to appreciate just how amazing a place it was (because of the people that filled its walls of course). At the time, as with most things in life, I just floated in and out of that place like it was no big deal. But looking on all those times, my head floods with such great memories of friendship and laughter.
And I'm encouraged that many friends have stayed together in community after moving on to new facets of life. That there's more reason to believe that it's people that make places great, not the places themselves. And that when it comes time for me to move on, I can do it with more confidence and less fear that those memories are a thing of the past.