The start of a new school year is a great time to establish new routines. If there’s a habit you want to adopt, now is probably the time to do it. If there’s a new identity you want to explore, why not start now? One of the best things about being in college is that, aside from your friends and that one person in your major that you just can’t shake, each semester brings heaps of new faces. This isn’t high school: no one knows about that time you went to class in the sweats you slept in. No one cares that you were crying in the library during finals or flubbed your way through a presentation. The best part about reinventing yourself in college is that it’s completely for yourself. Knowing this, every step of the reinvention is up to you, for better or for worse.
Maybe the idea of “reinventing” yourself for a new school year conjures up awkward memories of stepping into your first day of middle school with beads in your hair. Maybe you find resolutions corny. If you cringe every January at your friends’ “New Year! New Me!” posts, you probably aren’t alone. Instead of new beginnings feeling like a time to let go of any past mistakes, these periods of time become hashtags, slogans on T-shirts, or try-too-hard quotes on your boss’s mug. If the “New Year, New Me” sentiment makes you wince, that response is valid but unhelpful. Let this go. Let this journey be what it is. Make a vision board, say your affirmations, and feel completely unashamed while doing so. There’s only one piece of advice I’m truly offering here: let go of embarrassment.
Really. That’s it. If you want to reinvent yourself, all you really need to do is stop feeling self-conscious. Sure, there are lists upon lists and endless articles about how to reinvent yourself. They might offer a multi-step approach or pages of “tips,” but if you want to reinvent yourself: just do it. Give yourself permission to feel. You decide what this “new you” gets to look like. You decide who you get to be.
This advice is as serious or as silly as you want it to be. It could be purely aesthetic, or it could involve deep inner work. Perhaps the old you wore all black and now the new you wants to wear neon every day, or the old you slept until noon every day and the new you rises with the sun. Reinventing yourself may mean completely overhauling your existing routines, or stepping foot on campus looking unrecognizable. Regardless, the start of a new school year is the time to let go of whatever’s holding you back, stop being embarrassed, and reinvent yourself. If this isn’t the right time, that’s okay too.
You get to make or unmake yourself at your own pace.