I'm going to be honest here, I'm weird. I love bathroom humor, youtube videos of people falling, memes, and Spongebob puns. I will laugh at almost anything, but that's not just it. I love to make everyone else laugh as much as I do.
Growing up, I was always considered somewhat weird. Even if my friends didn't say it, I could tell that sometimes they faced secondhand embarrassment from my obnoxious laugh and outgoing personality. I wasn't afraid to embarrass myself. I even won "Most Unique Personality" in my high school's senior census. (This award was typically for people who people laughed with, but they never really knew if it was because they were entertained or if they didn't know how to react to the personality of the student.)
After years of hiding my personality in order to not seem immature or weird, I'm reclaiming the title. It's okay to be silly. It's okay to be weird. It's okay to be unapologetically YOU.
Millennials have a fascination with being "cool" these days, and I find it overrated. Why would you want to be just like everyone else? Why is it cool to compete to see who cares the least? Where's the fun in being boring?
I reject this idea of "the cool girl/guy" and I'm reclaiming the idea of the weird girl. I'm a Croc wearing, Ice Cream loving, loud, proud, colorful college student who loves to be silly. If I want to race luggage carts at 2 A.M., I'm going to laugh the entire time through. I'm going to be unashamed as I sneak a grilled cheese out of the caf every day. I'm going to laugh at my errors, smile as the life goes on, and enjoy all of it. To me, there's no correlation between laughing and being weird and being immature.
I'm a college student, maintaining high grades, volunteering hours of my free time for different organizations, partaking in study groups with my peers, focusing on my future, and taking an active part on my college campus in any way possible. If my sense of humor and personality has done anything to impact these, it's helped them. In a world full of stress, lightening the mood in any way possible is so important to your mental health and success in a healthy environment.
We live in a society where we're taught to be ashamed of being ourselves. We're taught that as we grow up, we have to grow out of our humor. We're taught that being yourself is the un-cool thing to do.
Why?
Until someone can give me the answer, I'm going to keep laughing. I'm going to be silly. I'm going to make the people around me laugh. I'm going to laugh. If being silly is wrong, I don't want to be right.
