Now that we’re in the thick of summer, I’m thinking a little more seriously about the prospects of college life, along with the rest of the Class of 2021. This means endless planning: courses, housing, finances; the list goes on. But for me, the plan that’s preoccupying me the most is one to mold a brand-spanking new, adult identity; in other words, I have to reinvent myself. When I refer to “reinvention”, I mean a number of conscious changes to my personality, activities, or outward appearance. I refer to, for instance, the “new school, new me” attitude that compelled me to sport pink clip-in highlights in sixth grade, as I made the bumpy transition from hippie to Avril Lavigne-chic. This reinvention of our image seems to be a hallmark of every major shift in our young lives. For whatever reason, we feel the constant need to become something or someone different. We almost see it as necessary for a comfortable transition to the next stage in life. But is this really the case?
I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who, to some extent, are a little uncomfortable with change. I know I am. I’ve shaken in my boots for every first day of school, K-12, and felt the weight of my move from New York to Los Angeles, even as a five year-old. If I were honest, a world in which life remains the same would feel a lot safer. But now, much to my chagrin, my peers and I are about to experience one of our biggest life changes to date. And what better way to cope with this completely new experience than by changing the people we are as well?
It’s important to remember that our fears of change can lie in our loss of control. Sometimes, life feels as though it’s moving at the speed of light, and it becomes hard for all of us to keep up. When we graduate from high school and move on to college, the amount of change we are inundated with is alarming; it seems that out of nowhere, we’re forced to become pseudo-adults. In the midst of the sudden seriousness and independence of college life, it’s probably easy to feel lost, perhaps even easier than it was in our first week of high school. And maybe, when we feel that sense of longing to be different from who we were before, it’s out of a need to get that control back. Exercising the freedom to change aspects of our identities, no matter the scale, allows us to acknowledge our agency, and remind us that we have power over at least one thing in our chaotic lives.
Maybe, we feel as though when we’ve lost control of the direction life is going, adopting a new persona is our way to gain it back. But perhaps it’s time to get more comfortable with relinquishing that control, to make ourselves more vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of daily life. Rather than making conscious changes to our identities, I wonder where we might find ourselves if we acknowledge that we’ll naturally evolve with the aid of time and circumstance. So, the next time you feel you have to throw out your wardrobe, dye your hair green and hang with a different crowd simply for reinvention’s sake, consider that maybe you don’t have to, and that you’ll grow on your own.
