With my fingers crossed and my heart full of hope, I hopped on an airplane about this time a year ago and flew across the country to begin my third collegiate year. The mantra third time is the charm echoed in my head for the entirety of my flight. You see, I had danced this lil jig time and time again, so at this point you'd think I'd have it down to a T…but it always felt as if the dance routine had changed without notice and I was always 17 seconds ahead or 38 behind the beat.

I was never in tune.

I couldn't figure out what I was doing so terribly wrong. I put every ounce of my energy towards trying to piece together a solution. Why was it nearly impossible for me to succeed in an environment where many others did so with ease? No matter how intensely I pondered this question, I remained puzzled. Three years later and the only piece-and-puzzle combination that made sense was that all this time I was trying to squeeze myself into a puzzle that wasn’t missing any of its pieces.

I didn’t fit there.

I don’t fit there.

Let’s backtrack a little ways as I describe the moment I realized I was deceiving myself.

The first semester of my third year, I was enrolled in a neuropsychology course regarding the concept of nature versus nurture. We discussed the influence of both elements on human development. The class was dedicated to research regarding the effects of genetics and environment on behavior. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that both are equally as important. I happened to take the class by accident too, as if fate was my teacher and it plopped me into a chair and said, "Wake up sleepyhead. This is what you've needed to comprehend for three years."

We talked about twin studies almost every single day but I vividly remember a small blurb from one empirical paper in particular involving baby mice. The identical rodents were separated into opposite environments, one mouse in optimal living conditions – a wheel to exercise on, snacks that were constantly replenished, a water bottle that was always filled to the brim – and the other mouse in nothing but a cage with minimal bedding. More or less, it was the same mouse, different setting. I drew a parallel to my own situation and for a hot second all of my peers looked like mice and I was the oddball in the room. The brown cow in a pasture full of black-and-white-polka-dotted ones, if you will.

Then and there was where my aha! moment was born. Happy birthday to my self-revelation.

Can you guess which mouse thrived? If you hypothesized that it was the one being given everything it needed to survive, then ding ding ding you're a winner. The other mouse spiraled downward. From that study forward, I realized that I was trying to live in an environment where barely any of my needs were met. It's not possible to grow in a place where the sun never shines and rain never falls...and although I'm talking in metaphors it was very real for me. Those three years spent at my former school drained everything I had within me. I learned that environment is more taxing on the mind than is taken into account, and even though I was giving it my all, my almost-alma-mater was not conducive to my overall well-being. For many reasons, it hindered my growth. Any progress I made was always retracted immediately, in some way or another, and instead of stopping to think that maybe this school wasn’t the one for me, I kept trying, trying, trying…and it was tiring, tiring, tiring.

I'm not one to give up with ease. I immediately viewed this as the wave of a little white flag so it took awhile to bring my head to the level that my heart was already at. It didn’t make logical sense to put a pause on my education when I was nearly three-quarters of the way done with my undergraduate career. The thought of telling the adults in my life that I couldn't do it anymore sounded humiliating. I felt that they'd view it as if I were only thinking of myself. It seemed as though I was going to waste the thousands of dollars my family and scholarship foundations had entrusted to me. Withdrawing from school was the equivalent to throwing it all away, in my mind. However, the more I mulled over the idea of leaving, the more I believed that those who mattered wouldn't mind.

Putting your well-being first is not selfish.

It's self-care.

For a really long time, I was taking a stroll down what I retrospectively believe to have been a straight and narrow path. I wasn't generating my own thoughts on any matters for the longest time. A lot of people aren't encouraged to pop the bubbles they're in and think for themselves which I feel defeats the purpose of the human experience. It's easier to follow in the footsteps of everyone before you because that's what you're conditioned to do from the beginning. You listen to adults for so long, and then you become one, badda bing badda boom. Something I have decided on my own is that I think it's necessary that you do what you need to do for yourself, whether or not that means defying what's conventionally expected of you. Acknowledge when something is unhealthy for you and then eliminate it from your day-to-day. I once heard that places can be toxic too and I can attest that it is true.

I hope that anybody who finds it hard to simply survive in their environment is awoken by my anecdote. Please remember that you do not have to do what everyone expects of you if it doesn’t make sense for you to do so at the time. Calling it quits on an endeavor you invested so much of yourself in may sound even scarier than those clowns running around America these days but I promise you that a plethora of opportunities will arise the minute you say goodbye to a destructive situation. Life is a series of adventures. Think of a theme park. How are you going to enjoy the water slide if you won’t stop getting back on the same gosh dang rollercoaster? It does a few loop-dee-loops and goes zoom-zoom at exciting speeds, but after awhile you’ll tire of the predictability. It’s therefore time to unbuckle your safety belt and pick a new ride.

Rerouting your path on a whim and not knowing what happens tomorrow is frightening at first, but it's also exhilarating, because you have no ties to a routine anymore. You are free to travel in any direction you choose. It's all up to you. I just don't believe in staying somewhere that makes you cripplingly uncomfortable.

Take it from me.

I removed myself from the atmosphere that was causing me misery and my life has only skyrocketed upwards from there. I didn't have any of the pieces put in place before deciding to withdraw but they're falling together, slowly yet undoubtedly. It's alright to not know exactly what you want because being aware of what does not work for you is just as beneficial, if not more so.

There's a route that leads to peace of mind out there for everyone. Follow the path that takes you to your own, even if it is nowhere close to where everyone else is going.