This past week, I had to write a reflection for one of my classes about how college was going and my adjustment from high school to college. Honestly, I didn’t want to do it because I did not want to think about high school. There is absolutely nothing I miss about high school other than a few friends and I view that as a good thing. This reflection made me really think about who I was as a person, and how I have grown since I have come to college. After writing my reflection, I realized that other than being at college to study, we are here to find ourselves.

Finding yourself is probably one of the hardest things in life. You have people telling you how you should be or act and we have the media portraying how we should look or what body image we should be. You feel so much pressure growing up because you don't really know who you are. You don’t really know who you want to be. You're so busy trying to make everyone else around you happy you often forget about yourself and how you feel.

Throughout high school, and the start of college, I would ask myself, Is this really who you are? Is this who you really want to be? In elementary school we were all that carefree kid; without a care in the world. Then in middle school we start worrying about what other people thought and started getting into how you look and dress. And in high school we started to question if anyone was going to talk about our hair or outfit that day to just wanting to fit in and be accepted by everyone. Everyone just wanted to be liked and noticed.

I found myself worrying about stuff like how I looked and who may be judging me. I worried about who was talking behind my back, who were my real friends and who wasn't, I worried about things that wouldn't even matter ten years from now. But now that I’m in college, I look back and wonder why I was worried about all those stupid things in the first place? Why did I spend almost four years of my life trying to satisfy and please others? The point is we spend so much of our time trying to make the people around us happy that we forget we have to be happy too. And I'm not talking about the type of happiness you get from getting paid that upcoming Friday at your job but being genuinely happy. I have valued the opinions of my friends, social media, and family a little too much. I just wanted to be perfect and be accepted, when in all reality all I could ever be was myself. But thank goodness for self growth. Looking back at how I use to be until now is just amazing to see.

To find yourself is not just to stop caring what others think, but as stated before, we must also find genuine happiness. Now, in college, it may not be easy to find happiness since we are always so stressed out over trying to balance classes, practices, and extra curriculars. With the semester coming to an end in only a few weeks, it is not easy to find a happy place and it is very easy to fall into a deep hole of self-hatred or the feeling that you aren’t as good as you truly are. But I believe that it is a crucial thing to do in your life. Most people find a happy place in one specific spot, such as on a team or in choir, but I have found that happiness is not found in a place, but within simple things in life. It is found when you’re lying with one of you best friends having life chats, and it is found when the leaves start to change colors and fall off the trees in the fall.

Honestly, finding happiness isn’t easy for everyone, but when you figure out the little things that allow you to open up and discover yourself, life will become easier.