College is by far the craziest four years of your life. You find new friends, new coworkers, new passions all while being a full-time student. You might change your major, get a tattoo or break up with your high school boyfriend. No matter what, the decisions you make pave the way for the road that is called the rest of your life.
My freshman year of college was my most educational, I’d say. I don’t mean that I learned a lot in my classes, I mean that I learned a lot about myself and I continue to every year. As a rising senior looking back on college I realized how much I changed and how many times I apologized for changing. But I came to realize that you shouldn’t have to feel like you need to apologize for being yourself.
When I graduated high school, I thought I was at the peak of my young adolescent life, but now when I look back it was such a small part of my life. I left that summer for college looking in the rear-view mirror of my dad’s truck at a town I thought I was sad to leave behind. I had friends, family and memories that I didn’t want to let go of. Distance is a funny thing. The first few weeks of being apart from those friends and family members were still spent texting, calling and video chatting with them and then one day it just stops. Radio silence. Your friends that you thought were going to be your bridesmaids don’t even respond to your text messages anymore and it makes you realize how insignificant all those people were.
So, I started classes and I made friends who might actually be my bridesmaids one day. People I could act my 100% self around without feeling ridiculed or judged. College is almost like this free pass at erasing your history and I love that. It gives you this blank slate to become the person you have always wanted to be, and that is exactly what I did.
I got tattoos and stayed out a little too late sometimes. I started writing and I stopped caring so much about what people thought of me. I still knew that people were talking behind my back about how much I’ve changed and in their eyes maybe it was for the best. I taught myself to ignore the comments or snide remarks because I wasn’t prepared to apologize for being myself.
Stop saying sorry for who you are. College is all about finding yourself and figuring your life out, not for living up to other people’s standards and expectations. What is a life that you’re living for somebody else?
Stop allowing people to criticize you for changing too much; change is inevitable. Are you still the same person you were 5 years ago? 1 year ago? No. We don’t stay the same throughout our whole lives. We were made to grow, to evolve. We are our struggles, our achievements and our failures. We are all our own story, so stop letting people write yours for you.