A little less than two months ago, I sat on the edge of an extremely uncomfortable mattress in a dorm room I would not be living in, at a college I would not be attending, in a state I may never return to. My high school youth group had taken a road trip from Southern California to Missouri to join with hundreds of other youth groups. Sitting across the room from me on an equally uncomfortable mattress was my friend - my best friend since, well, as long as I can remember. I think (I hope?) he'd agree with me on the point that we'd never had the deepest of relationships, at least until the past year. However, throughout the process of our senior year of high school and the following summer, by way of road trips, graduation, Peterson's Donuts runs, and a youth group convention in Missouri with springy mattresses, we grew to share a deep understanding of each other. So, it should have come as no surprise to me when, after sitting in silence on our aforementioned mattresses for at least half an hour, without my mentioning it, he asked me about the exact situation in my life I'd been thinking about. Thankful for his mind-reading abilities, I opened up to him for a couple hours, and he to me, about the fear and excitement of what was next in our lives.

You see, reality had set in for the both of us. In a few weeks, we would be going to college. College? Wash, rinse, repeat. College? Are you sure? Yep. College. He'd be going across the country, far away from family and friends. I'd only be a couple hours from home, but I had also chosen the unfamiliar; the rest of my family had gone to school (a fantastic school) in Iowa, but I would be going to school in Los Angeles. Maybe I'm being overdramatic, but, in a sense, the unknown lay ahead. So, my best friend and I talked that night about the unknown, and I guess we got a few things sorted out. However, we kept coming back to the same question - the same nagging question - a question that I'm absolutely certain every college freshman's conscience inquires about daily:

Do I need to redefine myself?

That's the word I keep hearing in the back of my mind: redefining. So, now a few weeks in, I ask myself again - do I need to redefine myself? After a couple months of bouncing that thought around in the back of my head, here's my take now:

You don't need to.

Before I try to convince you of that, let me play psychiatrist for a second. Here’s my diagnosis: In the last few months before you left for college, you started to think about the person you were. All of it. The good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. After that, you started to think about the person you wanted to be. Hopefully a little more good, a little less bad, and a lot less ugly. You thought about your time in high school, and how, if you had to do it over again, you would have done things a lot differently. Maybe you hated your reputation at home. You wished people didn’t know you the way they did. You wished they knew the real you (and loved the real you). Maybe you felt wronged, or maybe you wronged other people and wished you could make it right. And now, going into college, you're looking for a fresh start. Things are gonna be different now. From now on, you're gonna be kind, you're gonna be a good friend, you're gonna get good grades, and you're gonna thrive. You're gonna show everyone back home why they were wrong about you the whole time. You're gonna be awesome.

I could be totally wrong about you — maybe you didn't think these things. What I do know is that those thoughts were my thoughts for the past few months, and that my best friend felt the exact same way. Maybe he and I are alone in these thoughts. But I'd like to think we're not.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
(from "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost)

Here's the thing (and I'm speaking to myself as much as to anyone else). You might become a much better, more friendly, more loving, more hard-working person at college, but you're still gonna be you. And that's a good thing. Colleges, believe it or not, are not looking for perfection. Your professors are not looking for perfection. Your future friends are not looking for perfection. It sounds extremely cliché and a little "21st-Century-narcissistic," but please, be you. That's the person colleges, professors, and friends are looking for — someone who knows who they are, who lives it out, who makes mistakes and learns from them. That's the person you were designed to be. I know that in looking for friends (and in having found good friends) at school, I'm looking for real people, not people who claim to be more than they are. So, you don't need to redefine yourself. I don't need to. My best friend doesn't need to. If not for the sake of others, at least be selfish and do it for your own sake. If you want real relationships and real growth, you're going to have to be real. Speaking from personal experience, the best friendships you're going to have will be formed when someone looks at you, with all your messiness and "screwed-up" ness and says, "You know what? That's my friend; I'm gonna love them anyway."

Give yourself that opportunity to have real relationships, to grow, and to be loved. Remove those façades, those masks, those disguises, because they aren't you. You don't need to be perfect, better, more, etc.

Take that road "less traveled by." It might just make all the difference.