I've said it before, and I'll say it long after graduation, college is hard. The stimulus for potentially upsetting or overwhelming situations are endless—interviews gone horribly wrong, relationship drama, flunking a test that you were sure you aced, etc. Without parents and your friends from home readily available, it's natural to seek the advice and opinions of those around you. And while thousands of students means endless opportunities to meet new people, being surrounded by so many conflicting opinions and ways of living can really take its toll. Seeking advice in college can be really confusing, and it's easy to find yourself asking way too many people what you should do and having no idea which path to take as a result.

I am notoriously guilty of this. I truly value the opinion of others because I love giving advice myself, and that often leads to me asking 10 different people how I should respond to this text or what I should change about my resume. Hearing how differently people react to a certain situation can be a really interesting way to get to know them better, but it shouldn't come at the cost of losing yourself along the way. I've realized lately that, while seeking out other opinions can be refreshing and helpful in difficult situations, everything can become easily congested when the time comes to make a decision and you have too many conflicting actions to choose from. One friend might tell me to use the heart eyes emoji, while the other is more of a smirking side eye kind of person. It all gets very confusing. But as I’ve been asking a lot of different people for their opinions lately, I feel that somehow I’ve stopped taking my own advice altogether. Where I used to be incredibly set in my decisions and knowledgable of what I would do in any given situation, it appears that I’ve stopped asking myself entirely. It’s not that I’ve lost touch with my values and beliefs, but that I’ve stopped taking them into consideration when it might be that I need them the most.

Getting advice from others shouldn’t deter you from making your own decisions. While you might think that others know better about a situation you’ve never been in, more times than not the best judge for what course of action is right for you is yourself. College friends are made very quickly and deeply simply as a result of the massive amount of time you spend together. Even though it might appear that your friends know everything about you, this isn’t always the case. The only person who really knows what works in regards to your standards and values is yourself. Asking for advice can be incredibly helpful, but it shouldn’t compromise your ability to put yourself and your feelings first.

But hey, no need to take my advice.