Dear past self,

You are graduating college, a semester early at that! You were told that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life, but as we grew through the semesters, we quickly learned it was shaping up to be anything but that. There will be various obstacles and challenges in your way, but you will learn from these experiences and turn out to be stronger and wiser. College, it’s not the experience you expected at all. Partly because of how much you changed and partly because of something that affected the world that no one would have predicted. You learn things you never thought you would learn and tried so many new things. With this in mind, I want to give you advice, from your future self, so you know you are heading down the correct path.

Advice One: Embrace change

There is so so much change that you experience. You came to college thinking you were going to graduate in four years with a bio degree and apply to med school and further your education to become a doctor. I can tell you right now, you change your mind about that one very quickly (first semester freshman year to be exact). In fact you change your mind two more times after that about what you want to do… you dabble in pre-physical therapy and even become the vice president of the club and you test out pre-pharmacy where you have to do ORGO and quickly remember why you decided before chemistry was not for you. But that is not the only change I am talking about. I also am telling you to embrace change that you have NO CONTROL OVER. You cannot control that there is a spread of a deadly virus that causes the world to shut down. You cannot control that the school decides to send everyone home for the rest of the semester and you have to go back to your home in a different state 6 hours away from all of your friends. You can’t control that the pandemic does not dissipate in a month or two like originally thought and causes the rest of your entire college career to be done virtually (or hybrid). You can’t control any of this and yet you have so many different experiences that you never would have even dreamed of if it did not happen.

Advice Two: ask/get help

This is still something that your future self is struggling with. I do not like to ask for help even still but I want to let you know, no one is judging you for ever asking any question. Whether it is to explain how to do something or to ask for extra time on an assignment, it is okay to get help. You cannot expect to be able to do everything and understand everything right away. And asking for help goes for mental health as well. Do not be afraid to ask your doctor what they think is the right thing for you. Do not be afraid to go on medication or to go off of it. Stand up for yourself. Do not let the stigmatism against mental health affect your ability to be your best self.

With this all in mind, just know that you do not have to have anything fully figured out throughout your college career. You do not need to have your entire life planned out by the time you graduate. And you do not need to stress about college being the best four (actually three and a half) years of your life. Because your life is going to be amazing and fun even after college.

How do you meet someone new without automatically labeling them and them labeling you? We create these labels and categorize people into them, even if we do not tell them that we are categorizing them. Everyone does it, whether they realize they are doing it or not. Labels make it easy to remember someone, but it also makes it easy to forget that the people we are labeling are more than just the box we put them in. I don’t want one thing to define me. I am more than that. I am more than just what meets the eye. Because I don’t want to be known as “that girl”. No one wants to be known as “that girl”. But we let one trait define people. It’s an easy way to remember who they are. We use their physical traits, or one specific thing that they did or said, whether good or bad to remember who they are. And that’s what sticks. It how we describe the person to others. “that girl with the red hair”. I know that’s how all my teachers remember me, how my peers remember me. It’s an easy descriptor. Something that stands out, controls who I am. They’ll remember my red hair before they remember my name. And it’s fine for people to remember me in that way. It’s the first thing that people notice about me. I’ll always be easy to spot in a crowd, easy to pick out. That is not a big deal. But it’s the perceptions that people create that come along with it. As crazy as it sounds, people create this idea of who I am as a person, just based on the color hair I have. They think that my hair color is what makes my personality, how I act. I have many people ask me disgusting and creepy questions that I would wish I never heard come out of their mouth. I shouldn’t have to worry about how people define me, as my opinion about myself should be the only one that matters, but when there are so many people that come up to you and expect a certain thing just by the way you look, it makes you question your worth. And my label is just based off of my hair color. I know that their labels are far worse. They have worse perceptions, and have much judgment and hate surrounded by them. So, even if labels make us remember people and make it easier to be apart or something, are labels really good?

“You’d make a great housewife”.

Those were the words that came out of my coworker’s mouth. For a second I stood there not knowing what to say, stunned into silence. After a few moments of silence, he goes “I’m just joking!” and I forced out a laugh to break the awkward tension between us. We were coworkers, friends in some sense, but not that close. To hear this come out of his mouth was a bit of a shock. To give some context to what I was doing, I worked in the home department of the store, and it was the end of the night. This means I was going up and down the aisles and cleaning them and when I got to the towel aisle, I began refolding them and it was in that moment that he felt the need to say that. So, was it my folding of towels that gave off the housewife vibe? How does folding towels, something that everyone knows how to do and should be doing, equate to being a housewife?

First off, this man obviously does not know his boundaries and is someone who grew up with a lot of privilege in his life. But that does not excuse him making that type of sexist joke. And why is being a housewife a joke? Some people cannot afford to go to work. Their only option is to stay at home and take care of the house and the children. And why do women have to feel ashamed if they WANTED to be a housewife? Why does it have to be something that is considered a lesser job and something that is not to be taken seriously? Just because there is not a monetary value to it, does not lessen the responsibility and the necessity of being a housewife.

Thinking back to this conversation makes me wonder, what was his goal of that comment? Was it to make me feel ashamed, was it some weird way to flirt with me, or did he try to compliment me by saying that? I literally do the same job as him, so what do I do that makes me a good housewife and him not? I hope that this man wakes up from whatever 1950’s daydream he is stuck in and comes into the 21^st century.

Perception is reality. But is it really? Every day, we decide how we want to be perceived. Through our clothing choices, the way we do our hair, if we decide to wear makeup, even who we are hanging out with, all shape how we are perceived. With this, every day we are gazed at by outside people. We have no idea what they are thinking, if they are even thinking about us, or if they even noticed us, but when we see someone look in our direction, we immediately begin to think about what they might be thinking of us. We wonder how we are perceived to others and we jump to conclusions of their thoughts. But isn’t what we believe they are thinking about us actually how we think about ourselves? We come up with these ideas in our heads of how we are perceived to others but unless we are explicitly told, these are just ideas. They are actually just what we think about ourselves. It is our own thoughts coming up with our perception.