Emily Selke in Edinburgh, Scotland  04/02/2015 AT 07:00 PM EDT  , the young American passenger among the 149 innocent people aboard  , shared her last terrifying moments with her mother, Yvonne, when their flight – brought down by the co-pilot –  Now, friends are speaking out about the music-loving, 22-year-old college graduate from Nokesville, Virginia, and how she will never be forgotten.  "I knew she was special when I met her," one of her best friends, Ashley Kuhn, who, like Emily, graduated from Drexel University in Philadelphia, tells PEOPLE. "We bonded over music and how we both loved  . No one else liked them."  They spent a lot of their time together going to see bands and talking about their future. But what stands out most to Kuhn is how compassionate and caring her friend was.  "We used to go to Chili's all the time and she knew how much I loved their salty tortilla chips," she says about Emily, who was a music industry major and graduated with honors. "So if she got one that was super salty, she would hand it over to me. It was the small things like that that said so much about her."  Gamma Sigma Sigma Zeta Chapter / Facebook  It wasn't Emily's first time in Spain when she got on the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.  "She was the only American student invited to attend the European Festivals Association's training camp in 2013 in Barcelona for future festival managers," Xela Batchelder, her former professor at Drexel, tells PEOPLE. "She was very accomplished.  Emily didn't just dream of working in the festival world – she was making it happen. She was a founding member in 2013 of the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival, and her mother attended the first festival with her daughter last May.  "I deal with a lot of students, but Emily was unique. She would throw herself into so many opportunities," Batchelder says. "I admired her for knowing what she wanted to do and going after it."  The fun-loving and passionate woman who could spend all day looking at cute pictures of animals might be gone, but Kuhn says she and her friends will never stop thinking or talking about her.  "It's so surreal and horrific," she says. "I can't believe she's not here. She was so close with her mom, so it's kind of a blessing they left this world together. Everything Emily loved, she loved so deeply. We will always keep her memory alive."
"I would see Emily Skype with her mom, and you could tell they were so close and loved each other a lot," her friend Ashley Kuhn tells PEOPLE