Mixed Up Me

Imagine being on an island, having everything you possibly need to live a luxurious life, everything you want being catered to you at your command and not having a single worry in life, but then out of nowhere the everything on that island disappears and you are left stranded alone by yourself to survive. That was what the transition from high school to college felt like for me.  During high school, my own luxurious island was living at home with my parents because I never had to worry about a single thing with all the love and support I had received from my parents. But going into college, I felt deserted and had no clue where or who I was anymore. College hit me like a ton of bricks and I was just not ready yet to live on my own because I didn’t know how. I was so content with the life I had that not even for a single second did I stop to think about how different college was going to be then high school. Being a third year student here at Cal State University, Northridge, I have seen many changes in myself, but the most drastic change of them all was my first year as a freshman at CSUN.

            Like many young adolescents on the journey to become adults, I have had many phases and personality changes in my life. In high school, I started off my first years as a very timid and shy person. Then after the occurrence of some dramatic events, I became an angry and aggressive individual because I had not yet how to cope with my feelings. After my phase of “hating everyone in the world” had cleared out of my system, I felt like a new person because I had became a very nice and outgoing person towards my last year. Although I was constantly changing throughout high school, a few characteristics that I held dearly to myself were being a very humble and genuine person. The first two years in high school I was timid and shy because I wasn’t comfortable with my new surroundings of being at a high school. There were so many new faces I had never seen and so much more to explore being in a huge campus compared to my middle school. I spent most of my time veered away from everyone and I kept to myself because I felt overwhelmed. I was like a ghost walking through the hallways my first year, because no one knew me or noticed that I even existed. I tried being nice to everyone, helping them with their homework and doing small, kind, gestures, but clearly it wasn’t enough to catch the attention of anyone. People still had no clue I even went to high school with them.  I grew very tired of not knowing anyone on campus so I started joining more clubs, running for student council and Associated Student Body (ASB), and playing on the basketball team. People slowly started to warm up to me, and I began getting more recognition on campus by being more active at school.  I started to enjoy how thing were going for me and I began to become comfortable with South Torrance High School and myself as an individual. Really throwing myself out there on campus, I had met many new people and had a group of people I could call my friends. Through this process of making new friends, I had even found myself a girlfriend who I really liked and cared about.

My girlfriend and I dated for a year, which is long time for a young high school student and I began to have a lot of strong feelings for her.  We would spend endless amounts of time together and when we weren’t together, we would either be constantly texting or talking to each other. I grew really attached to her, and just when I thought things were going the way I wanted, Janelle and I broke up and everything came spiraling down. After the breakup, I no longer had the desire to be happy and say hello to everyone I knew on campus, I became rather aggressive and short with people. This was a very dark phase in my life, and all I wanted to do was workout and confront anyone who I thought was looking at me in the wrong way. I gave up doing my small kind gestures and started doing little things to make people want to fight me because of all the bottled up anger I had. It took most of my junior year to recover from the break up, but in the end all the hardships I went through made me a better and mature person. I started to look at life on a much larger scale and grew tired of being angry and confrontational; I was tired of making other people angry just because I was angry. That is when I had came to a life-changing realization and decided to turn my life around.                

            My last year in high school I was very outgoing and I tried my best to be nice to everyone I saw. I had finally gotten over the break up and I felt great mentally and physically from all the working out I had done to keep myself busy. I was happy once again, and there was something about me being friendly to people that made me feel good about myself. I finished off high school being very well known, most spirited in the yearbook, and in my eyes one of the friendliest people in my class. Even though it took me until the last year of high school to realize the person that I wanted to become and even though I thought I had finally found my true identity, college came so soon and I was not prepared at all.

It was just like the first year of high school again. Reverting back to my old-ways, I was very shy and not so much timid, but more awkward towards people. I couldn’t hold a single conversation with anyone I met, and since my dorm was so big, I kept myself isolated from everyone. I thought I had already found the person I wanted to become, but college came so quick and was such a totally different lifestyle, that I became confused and very flustered. I was known as the awkward, shy, Asian kid and I was so upset with the person that I had become. I decided to take a really long look at myself and to reevaluate my life and change it.

            I set a couple of goals I wanted to achieve and personality traits that I wanted to strive for to become a better person. I wanted to become would be just like myself in high school, but a lot more mature and responsible. I knew this wasn’t going to be a one-day process, and so I took my transitions at my own pace, step by step. I looked at all the stuff that I used to do in my past that made me happy and started doing them again, such as playing basketball and working out.

Now that I am a junior in college I have seen my progress over the years and my steps seem to be headed in the right direction to who I wanted to become. I have many friends out here at CSUN and feel a lot more responsible when it comes to balancing my life. It is the little things in life that help you become the person you want to become because no one becomes successful in life instantaneously, but by working their way up piece by piece.  Not until this year did I truly feel comfortable at CSUN; I am slowly starting to mold into that very out going and likable person that I want to become again, but there is always more room for improvement. I also want to become a person who is more dedicated to my academics and driven to find a career that I love.

College is the time where anyone can start fresh and you can be whoever you want to be because nobody knows your past. I came into to college like a lost child, and so for the first year and a half I acted like one. Having my life more in order now, I have gotten a better grasp of who I am today and what I want to become. I want to become a very congenial person, with my head on straight at all times, and always striving to better myself and the people surrounding me. The person I want to become is somewhat conflicting, trying to be responsible for any work I have to do and making sure I have time to socialize and keep strong connections with others, but it is manageable with the right time and effort. From past experience, I became the person I didn’t want to become because I held myself back greatly and is the only person there is to blame. For all you knew college students, learn from my past mistakes and be yourselves, going into college at full force because the only person that can stop you from bettering yourself is you!