During my senior year of high school, I was a Chief Editor of our school yearbook. During the entirety of that year, I had the job of formatting, overseeing, and designing much of the book, especially the senior section. This section includes pages that display every graduating seniors' picture and a quote that they chose. Some of the quotes that people in my class chose were funny, others were inspiring. Some were completely random, and others fit the person who chose it perfectly. I wanted my senior quote to be something that would make one look at things in a different light, whether they read it while flipping through the yearbook the day they picked it up in our school's cafeteria or in 20 years.

While endlessly googling "senior quotes," I found one that made me want to read it in its entirety. The lengthy quote was "You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things." This quote, written by Jamie Tworkowski, is a huge eye-opener in so many ways. You will need other people and you will need to be there for others, in order to live to the fullest.

However, one line, in particular, stuck out to me. "...A living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things." I believe that these words, together, and in this order, represent the kind of life I strive to live.

In college, I want to be an invitation to believe in better things. From major-specific entities to greek life and in between, I want to embody that line I found my last year of high school while looking for something as inconsequential as a senior quote. I want every single person I encounter, and those I spend the most time with, to see their own worth clear as day. In my career, I want to be an invitation to believe in better things. I want to speak life into the people I work with, to inspire them to give their all in whatever they do. I want to embody that quote to every person I meet, from the man at the grocery store checkout to the woman in the Starbucks line ahead of me early in the morning.

It's been 2 years since I chose that quote for my senior photo in the yearbook, and if I'm being honest I rarely think about it. When I was home for Winter break, however, I was deep cleaning the room I grew up in and found my yearbook from senior year. It is odd to think about how much has changed since the days I spent editing its pages, seeing it go from a screen to a physical book. When I flipped to the senior section, I saw my quote again, right under a photo of my 18-year-old self.

I hope that the next time I open my yearbook and see that quote, whether it be in a year or 20, I can say that I was that invitation to people, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things.