It’s been eight months since I started my college career, and so far it has been a whirlwind of opportunities, emotions, and growth.

Despite being so young in my educational career and life in general, I feel that having this fresh new start has shown me so much. College is important to me because of that, because of all of the things you can learn about yourself and about the people around you.

Within those eight months, one constant idea that’s been coming up is the idea of being selfish. Just for fun, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines being selfish as having concern for yourself only and not for the needs and feelings of other people.

However, being selfish has such a bad connotation to it. What I mean by selfish is knowing and realizing what you want, doing anything to get what you want, and not settling for anything less. It's sticking to your gut in certain situations and braving the storm.

With this year coming to a close and the housing application just around the corner, a lot of my peers are being forced to think of their rooming situations for the next school year. Everyone’s biggest struggle right now is figuring out who they're rooming with. Whether or not you can name those however many possible roommates off the top of your head, you definitely have a mental list of people who you could never see yourself rooming with.

Because the world just loves to go your way, the person at the top of your list decides themselves that they’re rooming with you. So what do you do? Are you willing to sacrifice your possible sanity and room with this person for the next school year? Or are you going to be “selfish” and tell them no?

People are afraid of showing the world they know what they want. When people get called selfish, they get this image of Kim Kardashian, the ultimate queen of selfishness because of her selfie book, and they’re afraid of being this self-absorbed monster. Society says that's what being selfish is. In particular, girls are being called female dogs because they are not afraid to stick to their gut and get what they want.

But you do you. Olivia Pope would be so proud of you.