Dear College Student

Dear College Student,

Can you believe it? Another summer of impromptu beach days, sleeping in, and daydreaming about your future has finally come to an end. (Well, maybe not the daydreaming about your future thing because I am pretty sure even my Google calendar now has that time blocked out for me while I drink my morning coffee.) Before you wanted them to, back-to-school commercials on TV began interrupting your daily scheduled binge sessions of your favorite shows as sparks of anxiety and excitement started to fill the tips of your fingers as August slowly approached.

One thing I love about this time of year is that it gives everyone, no matter what you are going through, a time to reset. It is a time to refocus and drop everything that has happened in the past for an opportunity to be and do something different. This changed my life the summer after my junior year.

My junior year of college was a tough year for me and the summer leading up to my senior year was one of my best because of a perspective change I had to force myself to make. Instead of wallowing away in everything that was going wrong, I took charge of my life and circumstance and vowed to find the good and happiness in everything around me. To be short, I became intentional with my goals and happiness.

I decided that I was going to fall in love with school again. I didn’t want to graduate from my university without knowing that I did and tried everything I wanted, even if it meant having to be brave or different that those around me. I ran for positions, crushed the idea that I wasn’t good at physics (and ended up falling in love with it), met my very best friend by having the courage to set up a lunch, studied for the MCAT, applied AND GOT INTO graduate school, joined a youth group at church, expressed myself through my writing, attempted poetry, and challenged myself to finishing an entire Spanish minor in the span of two semesters.

Nobody asked me to do any of this. Nobody pressured me into it. I was just tired of being unhappy. I was fed up with not being the best version of myself that I knew I had the potential to be. My physical, emotional, and spiritual self needed a lot of work, to say the least, and I decided that I was going to choose joy.

What I am trying to say is that when your perspective is right, you have the ability to see through a lens that gleams hints of positivity, hope, and true happiness with where you are right now in life. This means finding joy in your studies, being proud of how far you’ve come, and choosing to discipline yourself because you know your worth, value, and ability. Sometimes I think we get so caught up in the end goal that we find ourselves missing the purpose of the space we take up now which in turn negativly skews the intent of our actions and choices. We all need times where we have to stop and remember why we started.

Dear student,

You are in control of this semester. You are in control of your life regardless of what is being screamed in your head at night.

Stop letting negative people infiltrate that space, that perspective, and protect it. Choose to be the light. Choose to be brave. Choose to ask for help. Choose to make it happen. But most importantly, remember to have the courage to believe in yourself, your happiness, and your impact on this world.

You’ve got this. Go do it.