The saying goes, “Never meet your heroes,” because when you meet the people you admire or look up to, you’ll always end up disappointed when they don’t meet your expectations. I want to challenge that way of thinking. I have found that sometimes your heroes might not only meet your expectations, but exceed them.
A hero can be anyone! It doesn’t necessarily have to be a global superstar or world-renowned author, it could be your campus celebrity or someone you have a friend-crush on.
The first time I heard about Her Campus during the spring of my freshman year of college, I was immediately hooked. One of my friends, Rissy, had given a presentation at our sorority chapter meeting about how she had found writing cathartic for her mental health, so you could say I was having a bit of writing fever. Flipping through the site on the Her Campus SLU page, I clicked on an article titled “How Lip-Singing in Public Changed My Perspective On Life” by Morgan Hausback. The combination of Rissy’s soapbox about using writing as a coping strategy and the vulnerability that Morgan offers in her article made me realize that I wanted to get to know these two inspiring women beyond their respective media presences.
Other heroes in my life look like the upperclassmen nursing majors in my program or sometimes even my closest friends who run in my social circles. As long as they inspire me to be the best version of myself or are an example of someone I would like to be when I grow up–that’s my hero!
Your heroes are just like you. Even if your hero is famous beyond measure, I’m sure they still had an era in their lives where they sat at the kid’s table for Thanksgiving despite being well into their late teens or early twenties.
It was nerve-wracking to hit send on a text to Rissy and an email to Morgan, but I knew that they were college students just like me. I tried to put myself in their shoes, if someone had emailed or texted me high praise about the work I put out into the world, I would be blushing like a madman and immediately ask to hang out! That is exactly what happened.
When I went to grab coffee with Morgan, I didn’t set unrealistic expectations on what would happen even though she was like my Taylor Swift of the writing world. Instead, we fed into each other’s obsession with books and inquired about each other’s hometown and pre-Saint Louis University lives. Funny connections like admiring Mary Wollstonecraft or loving “The Yellow Wallpaper” helped me to realize that despite coming from such different backgrounds, we had so much shared ground!
Your heroes might just see you as one too. At the end of the day, we are all lifelong learners whether we like it or not.
The biggest thing that Rissy taught me is the power of positive self-talk. At senior firesides, a tradition that my sorority celebrates at senior retreat every late spring, Rissy told us that she looks up to all of us. Including me! You could only imagine my puzzled expression when Rissy emphasized that she even looked up to the freshman class of our chapter.
She told us that because she was surrounded by a group of women who spoke so positively about one another, she started to speak more positively about herself. Rissy saw us all as heroes in her life and made the same steps to praise our chapter in efforts that we would all continue lifting each other up and notof tearing each other down.
When I encourage you to meet your heroes, I hope that your heroes look a lot more like Morgan and Rissy rather than household name celebrities or frequent Forbes 30 under 30 fliers. I hope that you find beautiful connections with your heroes the same way I did. All it takes is one quick text or email!