The easiest thing to do in the world is wish our past unraveled in a different way than it did. It's easy to wish we had bought that phone before it sold out in our desired color, to wish we saved our paychecks every week, or to wish we had spoken our minds instead of holding in our thoughts for fear of being different. It's easy to pretend the choices we wished we had made were in fact the choices we did make. While it may be pointless to sit around and wish things had gone the way we now know would have been better. It is also a learning experience.
One of the most important things I learned from being a teaching assistant for 34 kids in high school is that you should always be yourself. Do what you love to do. I feel this is the most common struggle of young adulthood and a huge contributor to the amount of stress we deal with on a day to day basis. Everyone is so caught up in popularity and where we land on the food chain of high school and college that nobody takes a minute to stop what they're doing and ask themselves if they are okay with what they are doing. It's easy to completely change yourself just to impress others, but harder to live with yourself when you don't like the changes you've made.
I admit, it's hard. It's hard to go into class every single day and wonder what it is about your true self that people may not immediately like or be drawn to. I've made changes to my looks, my clothes, my friend group and myself just to fit in and to be what I thought others wanted. At the end of the day, everyone seemed to like me a lot better — everyone except myself.
What I wish people had told me, or that I had been smart enough to figure out, is that after high school, it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks of you. The reality is that you and those people you worked your ass off trying to impress all go your separate ways. No matter who you were in high school, college is a clean slate.
I wish I had known that the money I spent on electronic gadgets I didn't even like could've been used for more productive matters. I wish I had known that if I had stayed true to myself in high school, I may have turned into the person I am — the person I love to be — earlier on in life, and I would've saved myself so much trouble.
However, the most important thing I learned from these kids was that you can't change the past, but you can improve the future. I think the most important thing to learn is to take the experiences you have and turn them into fuel for the future. It gives you ambition and passion to become the best version of yourself you can possibly be. While I am not happy with the decisions I forced myself to make, I probably wouldn't be who I am right now without that experience.
