College is a time for self discovery, for choices and mistakes to be made. College is not only the time in which you will decide what you want to spend the rest of your life doing, but it is where you will most likely decide where you want to spend your life and who you want to spend it with. It is where you will decide how you want to see the world and what your place in it really is.
Women make choices during their college careers. These choices range from what to do on the weekends to what to major in, and even the seemingly unimportant decisions are often not easy. When so many important decisions must be made within the span of a few years, there might be several people who feel they know what you should do. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.
It is easy to feel pressure from outside influences when making decisions. You care what your parents think. You care what your friends think. You care what a possible future employer will think. The best way to make these influences work for you is to be selfish.
Being selfish is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, being selfish can aid your decision making skills and benefit your life greatly. For example, a good time to be selfish is when you feel encouraged to question yourself beyond a normal amount. When making decisions, considering different opinions may help you gain perspective, but it may also cloud your judgement and cause you to second guess what you think is best.
When you have others weighing in on factors such as what you want to do after graduation and how you should dress, having a more selfish perspective can help you focus on how what you decide will affect you, other than how others will think about your decision.
Being selfish will help you make decisions based on what will directly benefit you rather than what everyone else thinks or wants you to do. If you make choices based on what will help you in the long run, you will often find that those who really care about you will support those choices.
This may not be what you are used to being taught. Some women who think about themselves get accused of being cold for being so unemotional. While this may cause you to want to deter from doing what is best for you, don’t let it. At the end of the day, you are the one who is affected by your choices, so you should be the loudest voice of reason in your decision making process.