Somehow the popular consensus of today’s generation is that college is the time to “find yourself” or put a label to your name. But why? What’s the benefit of putting a label on ourselves? This mission forces so many college students to look for outlets to define themselves--through relationships, friendships, materialistic items or basically anything besides looking within themselves for deeper truths.

So why do so many get lost on this quest? It’s easy to get lost in college, and it’s even easier to just follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing around you. There’s so much less effort involved in letting someone making decisions for you, so why not follow what everyone else is doing? Why not go out when everyone else is even when you have a test the next day? Eventually, many students come to realize that this may become a detriment to their grades or that their lack of control is leading them to become a person who they don’t want to become.

Instead of finding a label for themselves, they let society and other people’s leadership stamp it on them instead. But this is OK, everyone loses themselves sometime in their life. Everyone has their doubts and life crisis moments, and if it weren’t for these times of our lives, we may not have a desire for change or improvement. But the method to the madness of finding your true independence and discovering who you are is making your own choices, they don’t have to be good choices, but they have to be your choices.

You don’t walk into your first day of college and instantly find your niche. And if you do, you’re one of the lucky ones. Some universities make you declare your major before you start your first day of class on a college campus. And sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn’t. One of the worst feelings in the world is believing that you have your future figured out to a tee and then discovering that the major you chose to get you to your dream job just isn’t for you. Then you’re really lost. The niche that you thought you found for yourself and that you thought to be so indestructible becomes instantly shattered.

We aren't wrong by changing our major or questioning our futures, but by trying to define ourselves as this one thing. This one thing we are good at, or this one thing we do a lot, or maybe even by things we don’t do—like homework. But humans are very diverse creatures, so why put a label on something that fits into a span of categories? Life isn’t about staying in one place or getting that one job. There’s always a piece of the puzzle that’s missing. There’s always a part of yourself that’s still out there waiting to be found, waiting for you to add it to your story.

All in all, no one is going to have a perfectly chiseled life schedule when they leave college. Life is unpredictable, and the deeper truth we should be looking for in college is how we are going to handle the curveballs that life throws at us. There’s so much more to you than a word. So make mistakes, and make them again, and then learn a lesson or two. But don’t wrap yourself up in the belief that everything will fall into place in some perfect fantasy world when you find a "correct" label or category for yourself, because as much as it seems to be real, it’s just a nonexistent world that will cause you to appreciate your unique gifts and quirks a little less.

So the next time you find yourself lost, just remember that you’re not lost--you’re just looking for the next piece of your puzzle. And eventually, you will realize that the beauty in life lies within those ambiguous and unexpected curve balls that life throws at you. And eventually, you’ll realize that the “label” you’ve been searching for in the outside world is really a search for self-awareness that only you can create.