I am a caterpillar in a chrysalis. While I have not yet emerged into my complete form, I am no longer the self I used to be. I am in a prolonged period of change, developing into who I’ll become one day.
For each of us, this change happens at different stages and in reaction to different events — life experiences, puberty, moving, etc. The list goes on and on about what could catalyze such a significant life change. For me, it was coming to college. I entered one way and I know that I won’t be leaving the same.
High school is difficult — always — as we are placed where our parents want us to be, attending a school because of geographical location instead of interest. We are put aside peers who may not share our interests or values, one who just happen to live in the same district. So, we adjust and acclimate in order to get through; we make friends with people for companionship and we do so under a cloud of ignorance to what other relationships are out there. We change ourselves—our interests, our behavior, our looks—to fit into the “norm” so that we have a chance at developing friendships, as ingenuine and unsubstantial as they may be. Yet, we latch onto the people we grew up with because they knew us before the metamorphosis; we hold onto the memories and history without acknowledging that a significant portion of our relationships were built on the basis of convenience.
It is when we depart from our homes and venture to places far away, where we have chosen to be, that everything changes and we notice differences in the types of people who surround us. The students at our colleges are there for reasons that most likely align with your own; whether they are interests, passions or personality traits. When we recognize that there is no longer the expectation to fit into the mold your high school shaped for us, we are able to develop into our true selves.
While our pasts are important, they shouldn’t limit us from finding our future selves. We can recognize our histories without being restrained by them. It's usually parents who say, “College is a time for exploration,” but I can now attest to that being a true statement. We are gaining an education in our classrooms and in the real world, experiencing life in this in-between world that exists between your parent’s home and adulthood.
Allow yourself to experience this time in life. Don’t let yourself be held back by prior assumptions about the world or define your morals based on what you’ve been told to believe. Open yourself to different perspectives and different possibilities and change will come naturally. Because it's here where we're supposed to find ourselves — our real selves — not those weird phases we went through in middle school and the years that followed. Eventually, we'll all emerge from our chrysalis as who we're meant to be.
