Raise Your Voice!

Hello?Hello? Can you hear me now?

If you’re speaking in that inside voice, no.

It’s me again and I am here to offer another opportunity to put a positive word in your ear. I’ve been wondering how I can continue to speak to you from behind a closed comfort zone and allow others to be comfortable in letting life pass them by. I have tried to come up with the best answer I have, but I can’t. Everyone in life is different. That is the outline for the coloring sheet of diversity and if you haven’t noticed, the world is as diverse as anything can be. People may be sitting in the same room reading the same passage that you are, but you all have different backgrounds and will return to your prospective lives but if all you are doing is taking a back seat there will be no good news to look forward to.

 “$**t happens.”

Yeah that’s a quote that everyone knows from experience, but it’s what you do after the unfortunate circumstances that makes you stay in control. You can’t allow the views others have about you or your beliefs change the way that you feel about your own beliefs and morals. For example, if people are talking bad about you or your friends remember to raise your voice and be heard. Let them know that they may not like you, but they will respect you and you won’t tolerate that behavior from an “adult”. Remember “to have a real friend, you must first be a real friend.” No one wants a friend that they can’t trust.

Another example, don’t be afraid to speak up in class. The teachers already have a stereotype about you, so prove them wrong. Read the material, take good notes, and visit their office hours! Besides, during class everyone is waiting on that unique statement that will drive the point home, and maybe that statement is coming from you. Some people are so overwhelmed with what the world is throwing at them that they get lost in the shuffle and take a back seat and allow things to happen, don’t. Stand up for yourself and what you know is right. Make a name for yourself as being someone that is wiling to take a chance and speak up when everyone else has lost their voice. Don’t be afraid to make your voice count. Don’t lose your voice.

The Beginning

So, here you are! At the place where dreams are born, friendships are made, weight is gained and you learn more about yourself than in the classes you pay for. I’m here to offer mild suggestions to make the transitions through life easier and perhaps a little funnier. I have some experience with being new to campus. I was not prepared for college mentally or emotionally. I wasn’t ready to leave home, nor was I ready to grow up. As you will learn the more you live the more things will come that you are not ready for. You have to learn to live and just adapt to change.

My first message is for those of you that want to make your mark on campus and in the world. I can only encourage you to be yourself. Life itself is so unpredictable and change comes so unexpectedly that there is no need to change your-self to conform to some social norm. Many people spend their first years trying to pretend to be something they aren’t. Buying the latest clothes and shoes does not make you the “big man on campus.” You’ll look like the biggest loser on campus because you can’t afford your books, or you’ve run out of money on your meal plan and you can’t eat. Don’t spend your time trying to impress people. Chances are if they don’t like you for who you really are, they don’t need to be in your life anyway. You don’t have to fit in to a specific “crowd” in order to make college life successful. When it comes down to it, college life is about the experience, not how cool you were so don’t be afraid to be different. Learn how to try new things; like join a Registered Student Organization, get involved within clubs for your major, go out and make friends, stay in and keep the friends you have. There is no need for you to try and be everyone’s best friend because we all know that not everyone is going to like us, and we have to be mature enough to accept that and keep it moving forward.

Go to class! You might as well; you’re going to pay for it anyway! While you’re in class learn something, find a major that suits you so that you can actually be awake in class. Learn how to live outside of the box, and if you have to… build your own box. Someone is eventually going to come along knocking asking to borrow a cup of sugar, so while you’re at it get to work on yourself. How can you improve someone else’s life without taking a step back and realizing and correcting your own faults?

SO… the lesson for today is don’t be afraid to be yourself, for when we are no longer concerned with other people’s thoughts about us, we have reached a new level of maturity. Besides if you change into someone else then who’s to say the people you’re trying to impress are going to like the new you anyway? Too much change and you’ve lost the one person that appreciated and honestly liked you for you…(YOU)