Dear Incoming College Freshman (and everyone who has ever experienced self-doubt),
Being yourself is one of the most important, if not the most important things you can do in your life. It will take you far if you let it, if you let yourself explore who you can be and who you are, even beyond what you might be limiting or resigning yourself to without even realizing it.
You’re about to leave high school and enter a new phase of your life—and that can be scary, especially if you’ll be in a totally new environment without parents or familiar friends to lean on. But that’s okay. Doing something that scares you can often bring out new and positive qualities in you that you may have never known were there before, waiting only for the need to be discovered. That’s exciting, right? You’ll be pushing yourself past what you now know as your boundaries, but those boundaries will soon evolve into challenges that you’ve overcome with help from your own self-knowledge. And guess what? You’ll also come out on the other side of those challenges having grown emotionally, having learned even more about yourself, and having cultivated some of those qualities that perhaps have made you feel different throughout your young life. Whether “different” has positive or negative connotations for you and your experiences so far, hold onto those qualities—they’re what make you special.
Being yourself means being different, being what makes you uniquely you and sets you apart from the rest of the people in the world. This is so important. Don’t ignore those different qualities. Instead think of them as your ace in the hole, your winning card. From the outside, it looks like any regular card and probably nothing special as far as other people can see. Those people may be dismissive or ridiculing or generally negative about it. They may say that there’s a better card for you to play, while not knowing the special thing you hold in your hand. But don’t let them discourage you or convince you otherwise. You know your card is an ace. You know it’s special, you know it can help you win. Maybe you’ve shown it off to people or maybe you’ve kept it to yourself because you’re not sure how (or if) you can use it yet; but it’s there, waiting patiently for its time to shine.
The value in being yourself is truly priceless, and it’s something no one can ever take away from you. In fact, only you can be the one to do that, to tamp down your own uniqueness for the sake of fitting in, following convention, keeping to a certain plan, etc. And let me be one to speak from experience and say that doing that, denying who you are in whatever sense that may be, is never worth it in the long run. I’ve found that whenever I’ve tried to do that, I’ve ended up with regret for not following myself and what I knew deep down was me. That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything from doing so. In all honesty, ignoring that voice inside me—which seems to have the purpose of affectionately (but firmly) nudging me towards my true self in the hopes that I will act accordingly (to my benefit)—has only served to further reveal me to myself and even strengthen a growing resolve to not make that same kind of mistake (that’s not really a total mistake because I still got something out of it) again. In sum, you can still learn about yourself even when you’re ignoring yourself. Crazy, right? Here’s some free advice, though: take the shortcut, listen to that inner voice of yours, and let yourself be yourself now. It’ll be okay.
XOXO,
A Graduating College Senior (who set aside what she really wanted to do, trudged her way through a degree she never planned on, and still managed to come back to herself and her real happiness in the end—just in time for the next beginning)