I spent a majority of my adolescent years letting fear keep me from becoming involved in activities. Whether it was a sport that my friends were playing or a club they were involved in, I never gave myself the chance to see what activity would be a good fit for me. It took me awhile to figure out that this was a terrible mentality, and unfortunately, for a long time I was just 100% unaware of the social fatalities that can arise from this way of thinking. It wasn’t until I gained the courage to join Speech and Debate in high school that I learned this, and it is something that I see as one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. I can say with complete certainty, that without Speech and Debate, I would not have been able to thrive at UCD in the ways that I have thus far. This epiphany that I had as a young, fourteen year-old freshman in high school was my first step into developing a proactive mentality: something I recommend all womxn should do.
It is understandable; there is something about fighting to get what you want that is daunting. Coming into a university of this size, it is okay to be scared of taking action or to becoming involved, and during my first couple months of Fall Quarter, I was regressing into my adolescent tendencies as a result of this, but as Winter Quarter rolled around, I knew that I could not spend the entirety of my four years at Davis, sitting in the background, going from my dorm room to class and then straight back to my dorm room.
Image source: Andrew Neel
I believe that all of my experiences since I was fourteen years old have been building blocks for this mentality, and the more I learn, the more proactive I want to be, but when I compare all of my experiences, one always seems to prevail: moving away to college. This has been the first “real world” experience I have ever pursued, and quite frankly, I think it will forever be considered a turning point in my life. Leaving home has taught me how to make decisions for myself. It has allowed me to develop a maturity that cannot be developed merely by age. It has taught me true independence because these days, everything I want to do, I have to do for myself because no one is going to do it for me.
I have found that there is no sense in playing a perpetual waiting game. When I was a child, I thought things would just come to me, but that is not the case. Very little comes when all we do is to wait for opportunities to come our way. Don’t me wrong, opportunities come and go, and will not always be in your control, but there is no problem with setting out to get what you want. You do not have to wait for things to come to you, and you shouldn’t.
I have been talking about declaring a double major since week one of Fall Quarter, but I was anxious about how to go about this, and I was not sure if it would be approved. I was afraid. I waited until last week to submit the form, and guess what, it was approved after two days. I could have done this weeks, even months, before I did. There is no reason for us to be afraid of acting because we have nothing to lose. Take control of your life and your opportunities. Don’t settle for being only reactive; take charge, and keep working for what you want.