It was not
until coming home after completing my freshmen year of college that I truly
realized the profound effect the past ten months have made on my life. Without
realizing it I embarked on a journey of self-realization and am slowly
discovering who I am as a person. Yes, I have matured, but more importantly I
am revealing my likes and dislikes and shaping the person I am going to be for
the rest of my life. Although this is scary, I have never felt more connected
to myself.
The summer
after my senior year I really struggled with the idea of leaving for college.
Everything was perfect in my life. I had the best friends I could ask for and
more importantly a supportive family. I was angered at the fact that life was
going to change and for no reason at all. Why couldn’t I experience the
happiness I was feeling right now forever? Looking back at the person I was a
year ago, I can’t help but laugh at my naiveté. Yes my life was going to
change, but I had no idea at how much my life was going to change for the
better.
My first
month of college was a whirlwind of emotions. I was five and a half hours away
from everything I knew for seventeen years. I was comfortable at home. Now, I
was at a school with 26,000 unfamiliar faces. 26,000 people who each had a new
story to share. 26,000 people who could offer me the world. Yet, I didn’t see
it that way. I was homesick.
I would not
change anything about my first month at school because it forced me to grow up.
I realized that this was life. Things change and that’s the way it is. I needed
to deal with it. I needed to learn to live on my own and stop holding onto the
past. I was trying to relive memories of days that were far gone instead of
creating new memories. That is the worst thing someone can do. Not just in
college, but in life because living in the past holds one back from living.
Just simply living. Putting your happiness in the past and in the future is no
way to go through life.
The day I
realized this goes down as one of the best days in my life because that was the
day that I started to find true happiness. I never realized how much I felt
held back in high school until I started to do things for myself in college. So,
I can confidently say the greatest lesson my freshmen year taught me is to live
life for yourself. Not in a selfish way. Kindness towards others goes a long
way. Yet, it is imperative to find things that make you happy and pursue that
with everything you have in you. I learned if I can’t make myself happy then
there’s no way I could make others happy.
I slowly
stopped caring what others thought about me and stopped holding back who I was.
If someone didn’t like me for who I was then they were entitled to their
opinion, but I wouldn’t compromise who I was to make someone else happy. Not
anymore. You can’t please everyone. I showed myself for who I was and found
people who accepted me for me. No one else. That is the greatest gift I could
have received.
The past
year has opened my mind to new people and new experiences. Each day is an
opportunity. An opportunity to meet someone who can change your life forever.
An opportunity for you yourself to change your life forever. Regardless, it is
so important to be open-minded because you never know what each day will bring.
I found myself looking for people with different views then mine and learning
and growing from them, but never compromising my own beliefs to fit in. People
who change themselves for others lack self-confidence and fear individuality. That
concept alone saddens me.
I can’t
count the amount of mistakes I made the past year and if I could that would
have been my biggest mistake. I learned from the mistakes I made and grew from
it.
The past
year taught me to be bold. To be daring. I have so much to offer and the world
has so much to receive. I learned to be ambitious and to dream big. I learned
that when people say it’s the little things that matter they are telling the
truth. I learned that sometimes you need to just stop what you’re doing and
dance (Thanks Emma). I learned that happiness is a choice. I learned to stop
thinking and to just do it.
I look back
at my senior year self. The girl who feared the world and I smile. Somewhere in the past ten months I became myself and the world became my
playing field. I am only eighteen years old and I have so much life to live, so
many laughs to laugh, smiles to smile, tears to cry and emotions to be felt. I
have the world to see, people to meet, lives to change. My senior year self
would look at who I am today and probably see a different person, but I believe
she would say you’ve done pretty damn well, but you still have so much more to
do.
