This past Sunday I went to a women's leadership conference at Vanderbilt called Prevail. Now if you know anything about me, it's that personal development is, excuse my language, my s**t. I'll jump on any and every opportunity to talk about feelings, set goals for myself, listen to people's problems, and learn from others (often all at the same time). I'm always striving to improve myself in all aspects, especially in the way I connect with others in the world. With featured topics such as mentorship, mindfulness, perfectionism, prioritization, and relationship building, you could say Prevail was basically made for me.

While it did teach me a lot, especially during my second session on creative leadership, the conference definitely wasn't what I expected it to be. Don't get me wrong, the conference was set up beautifully and it's always valuable to hear and learn from the words of the amazing women surrounding me on campus. I just thought I would come away feeling empowered and validated as a woman, which on a superficial level I definitely was, but something didn't quite sit right. I think one image that captures this feeling was seeing diverse women leaders in the world projected onto a big screen, flashing famous quotes dispelling wisdom from their years of hard work and accomplishment. It was exciting seeing all the things women were doing in the world to better things for us, but I was also conflicted because I knew behind each of those smiles was a story of hardship that had been covered up with a glossy photo.

At the beginning of the conference we were randomly assigned to different tables and had "table talk" facilitated discussions. I noticed our conversation kept coming back to this idea of being held to such a high and impossible standard of not being worth anything significant if we weren't absurdly successful in every facet of our life, while also making it look easy. This struck a chord with me, because as a woman on Vanderbilt's campus I'm constantly thinking about my appearance and how much better I should be utilizing this privilege of higher education. I know that I should be more forgiving with myself, but there's always so much pressure to do the best I can that eventually I'm just left exhausted trying to please everyone else and reach the internalized impossibly high standards I set for myself.

I think what rattled me the most though was that looking around the ballroom I saw almost the perfect quotas of diversity you could wish for -- different skin tones, hair textures, and backgrounds of all types -- yet I didn't feel like anyone was talking about how our womanhood intersected with other aspects of our identity. This may have also been the result of being seated at a table where every other woman besides me, except for one racially ambiguous woman, could be labelled physically as white.

While we discussed problems on campus with organizational systems such as Greek Life I felt like the focus was so much on men negatively impacting women, that I felt like something was almost wrong with me when I added to the dialogue by mentioning instances of being targeted or blatantly ignored by other women (and genders of all types) because of other aspects of my identity such as race or sexuality. I felt the urge to coat my words with disclaimers like "not all members of sororities" or "not all white women" when in reality I just wanted to talk about my experience in a sincere way without having for once to cater towards someone else's guilty subconscious.

That's when I realized that although being a woman on Vanderbilt's campus comes with lots of pressure and expectations, that's how I've always felt as a woman in any aspect or phase of my life. I've always felt an obligation to represent those without the chance to speak for themselves. Every day I am forced to think about how my skin color and physical features define me to others in any organization that I participate in or represent as a student leader and how this then will reflect on those who I may not know, but look like me. I can't talk about being a woman without also discussing how other aspects of my identity have impacted my life experiences in equally terrible and wonderful ways. It's not just during certain situations or incidents on campus after which I choose to regain awareness of societal problems. I am constantly battling these ideas in my head. I don't have the choice to ignore them, those racial/immigrant/sexist/homophobic/classist problems are just my life.

It's easy to blare a feminist fight song and repeat phrases of female empowerment to a room full of women. What's harder, is accepting for yourself that even surrounded by like-minded women you'll still feel alone and step out still having to continue the work forged by women before you. It's easy to get a group of women to nod their head while you complain about that guy's sexist comment in your math class. It's harder to accept that you'll probably still have to work twice as hard to prove yourself worthy of having half as many opportunities opened for you than he will. It's easy to say you wouldn't give up your life experiences for anything else and rep girl power and strength all day. It's harder to accept that being a woman in this world will often feel like a curse instead of a blessing.

Given the opportunity to listen to amazing female speakers and hear their stories, learn skills useful in the professional world, and even receive lunch and fun swag, I thought nothing could go wrong. This past Sunday I learned it wasn't the conference I was upset about, it was the fact that while dialogue and awareness are an important starting point, ultimately a conference alone couldn't solve these issues that are so pervasively institutionalized in our society. I learned that sometimes it's okay to shed my feminist fight suit and just take a moment to acknowledge and rant for myself and on behalf of the world being affected, the raw, negative truth that it's d**n hard being a woman, before I can continue to believe that I can indeed make a real difference so that this doesn't have to be the case one day for women (and all genders) on and off campus.