“Lincoln? C’mon, Mom, I would never go to school in Nebraska, let alone Lincoln!”

I was a haughty young thing at the beginning of my junior year: I had my idea of how my life would go, damnit. Somehow I found Nebraska—the state I was where I was born, the state where I grew up—to be beneath me. I wanted bigger and better things, I wanted out. Even if I did escape the confines of Seward, but continued to remain in Nebraska, I would still be surrounded by the small-town mentality that seems to permeate throughout the state.

Luckily, I’ve finally grasped that any problems I have with Nebraska are not problems that are Nebraska-exclusive—they’re not even high-school-exclusive as so many people like to say—they are problems that will surely follow me anywhere I go.

The problem is people. No matter if I am in New York City or Sacramento, Chicago or Little Rock, there are going to be people that I can’t stand. There are going to be people that get plastered every night and still perform better than I do in school or work. There are going to be people who betray me, people whose opinions conflict with mine, people who are obnoxious, people who will hate me at first glance. These people will be the same no matter if they are at Yale or at Wesleyan, in my high-school class or in the office.

In the very same way, people are a blessing. There will always be people that I can click with. There is going to be the friend who is like an older sibling, the friend who can finish my sentences, the friend who is a slightly cooler version of myself, the friend who is a dork with a heart of gold, the friend who would do anything for me, the friend who is smarter than me, the friend who is dumber than me, the friend who always shows me a good time, the friend who I’m attracted to, and the friend who will always be there, the friend who is the Will to my Grace.

I have realized in the past few days that the quality of a place, a state, a town should not be determined by its negative attributes—its endless cornfields, its bigots, its drunkards, its empty streets. It should be about the little, day-to-day things that make life, life—the ice-cream shops, the coffee houses, the cobblestones, the park benches, the drives with the windows down, the walks together hand in hand, the beats your heart skips at the sight of true beauty. This quality is not only found in the scope of a town or the grid work of its streets, but in the people, and in the friends that are along for the ride.