Admittedly, this sounds very cliché, but I believe it to be something that everyone should hear and keep with them throughout college and all its craziness, and something I definitely wish I had understood the true importance of before embarking on this four year-long journey with no definite end. These are words that stuck with me from the moment I first heard them, standing in line at the Brew in the AMU one morning and making light conversation with a girl in the class I’d just come from. We were talking about majors – specifically my aspirations of switching out of biology and taking up English instead. I expressed my anxiety regarding finding a “meaningful career” after graduation with an English degree, and I distinctly remember her sort of shrugging it off, telling me to do what’s best for me and what would make me the happiest.
“Do what’s going to make these four years the most valuable to you. Like, you shouldn’t care about finding a job yet or what people will think or anything like that – who cares? It’s totally okay to be yourself, and you should.”
As soon as I got my coffee, I took a seat in the back by the computers, quickly grabbing my laptop and setting it on the doodle-covered wooden table before me. I immediately open Outlook and start drafting an email to my advisor, the subject line “Katie Breck – Changing Majors.”
No question mark.
I haven’t looked back since.
I’ve grown to understand the importance of those nine little words more and more as the semesters have progressed, as I’ve outlived the “Freshman Fifteen” and diligently worked past the “Sophomore Slump”; as friends have come and gone like clockwork and stained the fabric of my own existence, but never quite covering it altogether.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to smile with all your teeth, showing off that thousand-dollar smile your seventh grade self hated so much, so you smiled as if your lips were sewn shut, stretching across your chin almost unnoticeably.
I’ve learned that it’s okay not smile at all sometimes.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to not like any of the songs on the radio, to think that they all sound the same no matter how many times you change the station, with their abundance of beat drops and overtly auto-tuned vocalists littered with lyrics that make you want to quit your day job and somehow save the music industry. I’ve learned that it’s also okay to yell every word of “Gucci Gang” with your friends at the top of your lungs, the windows down for all the suburban world to hear.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to order that shiny slice of cheese pizza instead of a Caesar salad, and then drift into food-induced slumber after a long day instead of trying to run three miles, and it’s okay to do exactly the opposite. I’ve learned that it’s okay to curl up under your blankets and ignore your ever-buzzing phone on a Friday night, to just let the week wash over you like a wave of all that you did (and perhaps all you could’ve done), and it’s okay to go and “paint the town red” with the people who blow your phone up every weekend.
It’s okay to cry, and it’s okay to laugh. It’s okay to do everything, and it’s okay to do nothing.
What’s not okay is to try and be someone you’re not.