When I first got to college, I had a very clear idea of who I thought I needed to become.
She was confident, always put together, and never second-guessed herself. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and somehow managed to balance everything without ever looking as overwhelmed as she actually was. She seemed like she had it all figured out.
I spent a lot of time trying to become her.
Not all at once, but in small, almost unnoticeable ways. The way I spoke in professional settings, the manner in which I introduced myself, the way I tried to sound more certain than I felt. I started to shape myself into what I thought people expected, especially in spaces where I felt like I had something to prove.
And to some extent, it worked.
I became more polished, leading to becoming more confident in certain situations, more aware of how I was being perceived. I learned how to navigate rooms that once felt intimidating. I learned how to present a version of myself that fit.
But somewhere in that process, I started to lose track of what was real and what was performance.
There’s a difference between growing into yourself and editing yourself to fit an expectation, and it’s not always easy to tell where that line is. At first it feels like progress: you’re improving, adapting, becoming more “professional,” more “put together.” But over time, it can start to feel like you’re constantly stepping into a role instead of just existing as your true self.
And that’s exhausting.
Because maintaining a version of yourself that isn’t fully real takes effort and it means thinking about how you sound before you speak. It means questioning whether you’re coming across the “right” way. It means constantly adjusting, even when no one explicitly asked you to.
I think a lot of us do this without even realizing it.
We build versions of ourselves for different spaces: the academic version, the professional version, and the social version. And while some level of adaptability is normal, it becomes a problem when you start to feel like none of those versions are actually you.
Or when you’re not sure which one is.
For me, the shift happened slowly; it wasn’t one big moment where I realized I wasn’t being authentic, it was more subtle than that. It was noticing how different I felt depending on the room I was in to realizing how much energy I was putting into being perceived a certain way instead of just being present.
And it made me start to question why.Why did I feel like I had to be so polished all the time?
Why did I think uncertainty made me less capable?
Why did I assume that being myself wasn’t enough?
The truth is, a lot of the pressure wasn’t coming from anyone else, but it was internal. The pressure was based on what I thought success was supposed to look like. What I thought people would respect. What I thought I needed to be in order to be taken seriously.
But the more I leaned into that version of myself, the more disconnected I felt from the parts of me that didn’t fit into it.
The parts that were still figuring things out. The parts that were unsure. The parts that didn’t have everything perfectly planned.
And those parts matter too.
Growth doesn’t mean becoming a completely different person. Growth means becoming more of who you already are, building confidence without losing authenticity, and learning how to navigate new spaces without feeling like you have to erase parts of yourself to belong in them.
I’m still figuring that out.
There are still moments when I catch myself slipping into that version of who I think I should be. There are still situations where I feel the need to be more polished, more certain, more put together than I actually feel.
But now, I notice it. And that awareness has changed things.
Because I’ve started to realize that the version of me I thought I had to be was never the goal. It was just a placeholder. A way of trying to feel in control in environments that felt unfamiliar.
But I don’t need to be perfect to belong in those spaces. I don’t need to have everything figured out to be taken seriously. And I don’t need to turn myself into someone else to be enough. The version of me I thought I had to be might have helped me get here.
But she’s not who I want to be anymore.
I’d rather be someone real.