There is a locker room at Rutgers in between the pool deck and the hallway outside. Although I swam at Rutgers for the first time when I was eleven, I did not know that this locker room was only one locker room until I was about 16. Up until then, I thought it was two. The pool deck and the hallway that it leads to do not seem to be anywhere near each other, and there are two different parts to the locker room. I always seemed to be in one part of the locker room when I entered from the pool deck and the other when I entered from the hallway.

When I found out that it was the same locker room all along and not two different ones, I felt very silly for not realizing sooner, but my mind was also blown. Even after I knew that there was only one locker room and not two, I still thought of the locker room as being two separate locker rooms, depending on where I entered it from. This is because I had seen it as two separate locker rooms for so long, that it was hard to change it. However, even though it still seemed like two separate locker rooms in my head, I still recognized that it was one locker room just like most people saw it.

This can relate to my perspective vs. other people's perspectives of anything. I can see something one way, and someone else can see something another way. For example, I could see the beginning of spring as a beautiful time full of color and flowers, while someone else could despise the beginning of spring because he or she gets terrible allergies, and that's what they associate it with. Someone who is a person of color might have a different outlook on life than someone who is white. When it comes to perspective, it is very hard to change the way you see things; as I struggled to change the way I saw the locker room even after I knew I had been wrong about it for five years. However, it is important to try to see things from someone else's point of view.

While your own perspective may not change, you can still understand why another person sees something the way that they do. If you see something in a negative light, you can try to see it from a positive light by attempting to look at it from another perspective. Keeping more than just your perspective in mind is a great way to know what is happening around you.