Arriving in Kingston after summer was a dream—I was excited for the breath of fresh air and independence I admittedly craved. At the same time, calling it intimidating would be an understatement. I was far away from my family, friends and my cats. My dorm room could never be my room. Domestic comfort would feel foreign, and I knew this, yet I was bubbling with excitement.
This move gave me a chance to reinvent myself; cultivate a new identity to foster belonging in this huge community. I needed to follow this huge transition, emerging from my own proverbial cocoon. I felt accepted, of course, in my smaller town—but the idea that I was about to begin this new chapter in my life spurred this need for me to change. I was dipping my feet into adulthood. I can remedy all the embarrassing things I did beforehand, right? Barely anybody knows me here, after all.
There was, however, one obstacle—something that stood before me, entirely immovable. Self-doubt. I’m not very adept at hiding my interests and flaws. How on Earth was I going to manage repressing them completely? I can take off the keychains and stow my posters away, but that didn’t feel like enough.
In the first week, trying to keep my chin high while navigating campus made me feel small. My interactions with others followed an agonizingly similar rhythm. I knew several people’s names, majors and where they were from—only to rarely see them again. Nothing really stuck. So when I eventually saw that people were already fixed in their own friend groups, like they’ve known each other for years, I started to wonder if I was the issue. It made me question why I couldn’t belong. Was it my demeanour? Something I can change and easily mask? Am I failing at this reinvention? Or was it something I clearly couldn’t change? Am I just fundamentally wrong? Doomed to be socially inept forever? My doubt, fears, everything kept festering.
I know that it gnaws at everyone—this unshakable invisible spotlight, outlining every behaviour that fell outside the norm. It was like that spotlight fixed upon me, though. Anytime I said or did virtually anything, I kept telling myself that people could tell I was a bumbling freshman. I internalized this idea: it defined my every action from the moment I got here. Inadvertently, I was doing the very opposite of “reinventing” myself. I wasn’t allowing anything fun or exciting to happen to me. I just watched as light seeped through the cocoon and I was hiding away from it.
In hindsight, I was certainly not giving myself any grace. It was too quick to determine these things, and I didn’t know what lay ahead of me. It was all a matter of letting myself adjust rather than forcing myself to blend into the environment. It’s so easy to get caught up in your thoughts when you start out. I feel like no one warns you about that, or maybe I missed it.
I did eventually figure out that I had it twisted. You don’t have to change for university. Rather, it brought about “change” in me. My confidence skyrocketed. I think it particularly started when I explored the club fair. It sounds strange, but upon going rogue on my orientation group and exploring it on my own, it dawned on me that I really just had to grow into my own skin and learn to be the most comfortable in it. A community exists for everyone. There was no homogeneous crowd I had to blend into.
I put my keychains back onto my bag, and turned my dorm into an abstract masterpiece, housing (almost) everything I’ve ever loved. This new-found confidence in myself brought me the greatest friends I could ever ask for, the community I longed for and the university experience I craved. It was a stepping stone for memorable Jackbox game nights, for academic opportunities and for finding my voice through writing for this chapter.
In a way, I did emerge from this proverbial cocoon. I am not a new person like I thought I would be. I am myself but simply older, surrounded by wonderful people, and I am certainly happier. It’s better to take time and find acceptance as yourself than to try to attain it quickly through a facade. This isn’t solely applicable to university, either. It’s a cliche because I am going to continue to relearn it.