All of us in college know the struggle when you analyze your syllabus at the beginning of each semester and try to decide where your effort should go in order to secure that A. If you’re anything like me, seeing “participation” as counting for anything more than 15 percent is miserable. Unless of course, participation just counts as showing up, but that seems rare. Now that I have that senior status, I realize how fast college has gone by and how little time I have left. Participation, then, has become less of something I have to do, and more of something that I want to do in order to get the most out of what little class time I have left.

When I was a freshman up until about last semester, participating scared me to my very core. This is no exaggeration. My heart would speed up, I would get flushed – and this was before I even raised my hand. I would count down class time silently praying that I wouldn’t get called on out of the blue. I remember telling one of my professors in office hours that I felt like everyone in the class was smarter than me. He slapped his desk in mock-anger and stated, “that’s not at all true.” This was coming from the professor who read my homework and essays and already knew the kinds of things I had to say. Maybe my limitations on my intelligence only existed in my mind.

I thought about how this applied to my own life and decided something very important – I can’t afford to be scared anymore. This life of mine is happening at this very moment. I know how fast college went by and how much more I could have gotten out of my classes had I braved raising my hand a little sooner. A fear gave birth to an epiphany, though, so there is no need for regret. I still have right now and the days that follow today.

Stop being so scared. Think about it, how often do you really criticize these other people solely based on what they think or say? If you find that you do this a lot, maybe that should be your lesson as well. People tend to save the harshest criticisms for themselves and we are all perfect examples of that. I have never had a reason to be so scared to raise my hand in class or in real life other than the false belief that someone would ostracize me.

Well, from now on, I am deciding to ostracize my fear instead. The reality is, there will come a day that lacks a tomorrow, and there will come classrooms that we exit without the hopeful promise of re-entering. I don’t need to stay silent anymore. Agree to disagree and fill your circles with whoever makes you happy, but stop being scared of participating for fear of being judged. Fear isn’t real, but life very much is, and participation counts for a lot of it.