Hint: it’s not actually about the walk.
Hot girl walking has been around forever. Seriously, since the beginning of time people have been walking.
However, the “hot girl walk” was coined around 2023. Coming off of “Hot Girl Summer,” the girls needed a rejuvenation activity.
What’s better than walking somewhere where you can touch grass?
During my junior year of college, I discovered just how necessary taking walks was for me. To say I was stressed during the fall of my junior year would be an understatement.
Though you still have half of your college career ahead of you, you’re no longer an underclassman. It’s time to start having conversations with your academic advisor about the courses you have left to take and the final requirements you have to fulfill to graduate.
On top of this, I was debating studying abroad in Madrid. The program was entirely in Spanish. So on top of being abroad in a foreign country and a seven-hour flight away from my family, all my classes would be in a language I did not speak.
Though I wanted the challenge, it terrified me. I was pretty good at Spanish, but pretty good does not mean fluent.
In addition to that stress, I started thinking about where I wanted to be for the next three years of my life after college. I have always known that I wanted to go to law school, but the question of where started to infiltrate my thoughts.
All this to say, I was a bit of a wreck.
So instead of handling it by myself, I started to do things that I knew would help alleviate my stress. I leaned on things like my faith, friends, family and activities that I knew would help chill me out.
On a whim, I decided to walk to Penn State’s Arboretum. It’s about two miles from my downtown apartment, but I had the time, and my AirPods were fully charged, so I put one foot in front of the other.
It was around mid October — the trees were changing and the leaves were falling. I spent my walk looking at my surroundings and was able to distract myself.
Most importantly, I was able to not think about the things in my life that were causing me so much stress.
The walk was not about the act of walking in itself. It was an activity that would calm my mind and give me peace.
If you ever feel stressed, I recommend finding something that will take your mind off of it.
That might seem a little obvious, but in stressful situations, sometimes people have goggles on, and all they can see are their problems. It can feel never ending, but nothing ever is.
It can be taking a walk, hanging out with friends or eating your favorite dinner. If you take yourself out of it, sometimes your problems don’t seem so unconquerable.
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. And if during the race you need to take a break, enjoy sightseeing on the way.