Three jobs, eighteen credits, and heaps of miscellaneous lessons to practice for and go to = the bane of my social existence and lack of blogging. A new semester has begun and I have finally conquered my long time worry/fear of caring what people think and concluded my summer with a “just do it” attitude.

The person I am today in contrast to the person I was a year ago, is a 360 degree change.  I would say that to people before, and they would kindly nod their head in agreement whilst not believing me on the inside. Now in the present day, they really agree and understand. Since going back home to Florida, I told my mom I would grow my hair out, but I did the complete opposite. I thought to myself, when I had long, luscious black hair, all I did was hide behind it. I hardly ever put it up in a ponytail (unless I was going for a run) and I wasn’t confident in myself or in anything I did. After I cut 20 inches off, I not only felt like I experienced whiplash every time I turned my head, but like I could run the world, metaphorically speaking. I didn’t have hair to hide behind anymore and my face was exposed to everyone. I became true to myself. I became daring; I felt like me, comfortably.

Why is hair so important to girls? Why do girls spend hours on perfecting that curl or making sure that section of hair is pin straight? The answer to that is Image. Image sucks. Since buzzing my hair off, stares have escalated and eyes linger long enough for me to exclaim, “take a picture and walk on.” Blunt, yes; who likes being stared at? When I had pink highlights in my hair, my professor in my criminal behavior class was discussing deviancy and said in the lecture, “if a girl who shaves a side of her head and highlights her hair pink, one scenario- her family would say she’s creative; another scenario- she would get rebuked and punished.” I’m not sure if she saw me, but in my head and I’m sure the people who were sitting behind me, thought she was making a jab at my image. In retrospect, I should’ve raised my hand and said something, but instead I remained tacit.

Now-a-days, you read all these blogs about “how to be yourself” or “to be yourself” and all these motivational reads from other people and you share them on every social media network you have an account on. Why must we realize that we should “be ourselves” after reading something that suggest that we should? I think that’s just silly. What happened to action? What happened to Mark Twain’s saying, “Action speaks louder than words but nearly not as often.” Sure, reading blogs about age not defining your life, or just taking that leap of faith is motivational and a heck of a lot inspirational, but what are you doing after you’re done reading that post? Are you buying a one way ticket to a different location? Are you quitting your 9-5 job? Are you dropping out of school? Or are you just going back to living your daily routine? We all have goals we want to accomplish and have that idea of what we want our lives to be once we’re finally done with our academic life. But if you think about it, our academic life never ends. We’re constantly learning and being tested by people and in a way, the latter seems a bit exhaustive.

I’m not trying to motivate you to “do you” or to go do something haphazardly. I’m not in the position to say anything about what you should do with your life. It’s your life, what do you want to do with it? What motivates, inspires, drives you? I talked to a coworker the other day and I had thought he graduated from school, but truthfully, he took several years off and now just got back into school and is in his second year. He told me that he suggests everyone to take time off from school, but it’s merely a suggestion. It worked for him and it has made him a better student. For me, I wouldn’t be able to drop out of school and then say, “yes, I want to go back,” because I wouldn’t. The main reason why I’m in school now, is because I’m nearly there. I’m almost at the finish line and I can taste the “freedom.” I would drop out. I have heavily flirted with that idea, but I know I shouldn’t. It’s not because it’s the norm to graduate college, but because I know that it’s in my best interest to stay in school. Now if I were a psychic and could foresee myself becoming the next Rachel Ray, then I might reconsider, but since I can’t make up my mind on what to do, I’ll stay in school.

To live a life worry free is a challenge. As a student, if you’re never worried, the only explainable reason to that is you’re living 4/20 24/7. Hakuna Matata folks.

College is the time to explore your life, expand your horizons, and experiment around. As a “senior” now, I tell all the freshman to make mistakes, but to not regret them. I bask in my plethora of mistakes. It’s what makes me, me. I look like a little boy, but I sound like a valley girl; I am Asian, but contradict the stereotype. I’m deceptive you see.