Day 2

2. The concept of "being yourself" can sometimes be confusing, but you should try to be anyway.
I am an 18 year old female. That's what the world can see at first glance. That is not my entirety as a person  nor would these observations reveal anything about my interests, goals, passions, or personality. The puzzling thing about the phrase "be yourself" is that it implies that you have an understanding of who you are as a person.  What things make up a person? Is it the organizations they belong to, or the talents that they posses? Does it depend on the day? Your current mood? Does who you think you are depend on the situation you are in or the people you surround yourself with? Because people are always changing this is a hard thing to wrap your head around. People are multidimensional and tend to break out of the boxes and molds we try to keep them in . Even though you know yourself better than anyone else, it can sometimes feel like you have no idea who you are. That is seriously okay! I mean you have the rest of your life to figure out who you are and who you want to become.
 Though you may change as a person I think that it is important to stay true to your core values. I also think that high school is a time when people tend to lose their sense on individuality in order to belong to a social group. Wanting to belong in a group is part of being social creatures. Being yourself doesn't mean that you can't belong either. It means that you try to do what you believe in and what makes you feel happy/beautiful/strong/(insert positive adjective). It means letting your own unique light shine no matter what anyone says.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Things I Learned About Life From High School: Day 1

On Friday I completed my last day of high school. Now that it's over I have time to think about all of the experiences I have had over the last 4 years. Things that I had success doing, and things that where harder than I ever thought could be possible. For the next 11 days until graduation I will be posting a take away or important reflection about high school life.
-Abs

1. Grades are important, but unhealthy thinking causes stress and unhappiness. 
 I had conditioned myself to strive for perfection in everything I did. When I fell short (which happened frequently, because we are all human), I would get upset and only focus on what I was lacking. For example if I studied hard and got a 95% on a math test, I would be upset that I still missed 5%, instead of being proud that I had mastered the material. This kind of thinking lead me to see every assignment, test, and project as a potential "grade crusher". I would envision the worst possible outcome, a bad grade that lead to a lowered GPA that lead to not getting into college. This scenario never actually happened. But still I continued to be stressed out and unhappy. Then in the last 6 months of my senior year I started to really change the way that I approached my school work.

I began to focus on learning the material and less on my unrealistic expectations of myself as a learner. I began to give myself more positive "self talk" and allowed myself to enjoy the little victories when I did well. I became less stressed out and started to have more positive attitude. I'm not saying that it was easy to change my thinking, but I feel that I have made lots of progress in the right direction. I think the biggest thing that I am going to take with me to college is that it is good to be motivated and to have goals,  but good learning  can take place when you don't get things right the first time. I think it's about trying and trying and trying again until you understand.
"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change"
-Carl Rogers