Social media has become a place where we can show our best selves and only our greatest moments. We are followed by hundreds of our closest friends, family members, distant "we met once" types of acquaintances and even strangers. Obviously, we can choose everything that our audience sees, tailoring the viewer's perceptions of us in favorable ways, whether we are meaning to or not.
I know that when anything exciting happens in my life, whether it's graduating or getting a new job, of course, I want to share it with everyone—and in the most instantaneous way possible. We want to keep that "high" going even longer when we can dwell on it through pictures, status updates, and comments with our friends online. And, the satisfaction of sharing success on social media so that others can see how well we're doing is definitely an ego trip.
We all tell ourselves that social media is not real life, that not every person's profile can truly depict their everyday. Everyone's online persona is always going to be different from our personal lives, even if only slightly. But, when we're feeling insecure or unstable, scrolling through our Facebook or Instagram feed and seeing everyone else we know (or don't know) post about their happiness, it can create a sense of mediocrity within ourselves.
I struggled with keeping this in mind a lot while I was in college and on the job hunt. Not everyone has the same circumstances, and when people are posting only about their successes (and often!) it became hard to remind myself that my successes would come as well at the right time.
No one wants to talk about how many rejection letters they received from colleges they applied for, no one wants to tell you they applied to over thirty different internships, interviewed for three, and was still only offered one. Failed tests, dropped classes, incompletes, etc. do not exist on social media.
I'm here to proudly tell everyone—because I think it's important to remind my family and friends that also struggle with this—I have failed. Multiple times. I fell on my ass over and over again. My "perfect" relationship that I depicted online for years ended up with me living in an apartment by myself and getting dumped. I've been fired from a job. I have failed classes and exams—I even failed some of my college courses twice.
But guess what? I am in a healthy relationship now. I live with my brother and best friend in a beautiful house. I have found amazing, new jobs and internships again and again. I graduated college with an acceptable GPA and found a major that I was passionate about.
What I want to leave readers with is this—remind yourself that even your valedictorian from high school has failed at something, even if they didn't want to share it with the world. Plus, who would want to trip themselves off of their own pedestal?
