As female college students, we have many expectations from society. Since the 60s when Betty Friedan wrote the “Feminine Mystique," social expectations have been changing and revolving. Instead of being condensed to just the job of being a housewife, society started expanding and broadening to accept the idea that women could possibly be in the workforce and obtain equality with men. However, we still have expectations. We are supposed to do well in school, to dress in a respectable, prim fashion on the weekdays, to keep our manners to a tee, and to tolerate all the people around us with a soft kindness – the attitude of the ideal American woman. However, the weekend conjures a whole different beast. We’re supposed to forget our manners and respectable fashion. We’re supposed to go out, drink until we drop, and sleaze around with different undeserving guys. After we graduate and maybe work for a few years, it is assumed that we will get married to a well-off guy and have children, to otherwise forget our previous drinking habits or wild ways, and to keep our exchange of education and intellect to soirees or PTA meetings. It’s just the expectations of society, my friends. If we don’t execute both, we’re either seen as too wild or too prim, too classy or too trashy, or just in general, mishaps that mock the definition of a female.

Let me just start off, I’m not prim or proper. It’s not my thing. My “prim and respectable” fashion includes men’s sweaters from Goodwill and crazy socks with my Chacos, defined by society as “hobo” fashion. I have no filter when it comes to what I want to say, and I really don’t give much time to people whom I don’t agree with. I go out on the weekends, not because society tells me to, but because I very much enjoy hanging with my friends and wreaking havoc. I work hard in school, but I don’t exasperate myself. If I do get married, I am convinced it won’t be until much later in life, not because I don’t want to get married, but because I want to work and set a name for myself first. Society would call me crude, confused, or broken. However, I have a clear, defined notion of what I want and who I want to be, despite social expectations, and I love myself more than I have ever loved myself in the past.

Let me say this: if we continue living underneath social expectations, we will find ourselves lost in a state of dullness. Most of us, and even I, fall victim to these social expectations, and we wonder why we don’t feel satisfied. Trust me, our happiness cannot depend on sleazing around on the weekends or getting straight A’s in college. I cannot tell you what will make you happy, because every single person has a different “personal legend” as author Paulo Coelho describes in his book, “The Alchemist.” In other words, every single person has a different path chosen by God, or fate, or whatever else you want to call it, that will bring them the most satisfaction in life.

I’m still finding myself, like any other college student. But, instead of trying to find myself along the guidelines of the definition of the female, I’m finding myself along my own guidelines of morals and values. I am finding myself through my family and through my friends, through my religion and through my politics, and through my love of culture and nature.

So, stop. Stop feeling like you have to act according to social norms, because social expectations is just a loose idea made up by the media, or more accurately, ourselves. We, as women, need to stop playing by the rules that are imposed on us, and start playing by the rules that we impose on ourselves.