Startled awake by my fourth alarm of the morning, I scramble out of bed with 10 minutes left to make it to my class. I hastily throw on clothes, grab my backpack, and fly to the door, down the stairs, and onto the street. Convenience is easy; it’s nice, it’s comfortable. But as I walk along the sidewalk I look down to realize that I’ve gotten lost in the sea of mediocrity and uniformity. I just became the stamped stereotype of a college girl in my over-sized sorority tee and Nike shorts. And now, I am lost in this sea of completely lacking individuality. When did standing out become frowned upon?

I don’t know how we came to this, but there is a sort of pressure to squeeze into the model set before us, when originally, this trend probably started with no thought put into it other than comfort and convenience in clothing. Yet now, we have to consider, 'Should I get a medium? a large? How big is too big? How small is too small?' In reality, it should be 'Do what you want, wear what you want, be who you want.'

It’s disappointing when you walk into class wearing a decent outfit, even something as simple jean shorts and a tank top, and people ask “Why are you so dressed up?” You wonder 'Why do I even need to answer this question?' or better yet, 'Why is this even a question at all?' I don’t want to become a stamp, and I don’t want you to become a stamp either. I would rather embrace diversity and individuality, because that is where the heart of everything lies.

However, conformity is far too common and far too easy when you’re placed in the small bubble of your campus. It's a bubble where no one comes in and no one goes out and you’re all blobbed together, left only to bounce your ideas of individuality off of one another until you all end up merging into the same thing. You're like carbon copies of one another, with the original lost in the mess. We all try to make our own marks of individuality, but we get all twisted up in who we are, who they are, who you are, who we should be.

But in some ways, I guess that’s okay. Sometimes, we have to let ourselves get a little lost in the sea of ourselves in order to find ourselves. It is in the differences we see in ourselves when matched up against the thousands of others we try to look like that we can truly discover who we are. Hopefully you have the courage to embrace your divergence instead of hiding behind that XL t-shirt, hopefully you can be fearless and be brave enough to add your own little flare of color to the sea of gray and maybe you can skirt a little ways from the pack or even dance on the edge of the crowd, close enough to hear the music but far enough to have room to spin.

So dance a little waywards and swim to the outskirts; we have more fun there, anyway.