It’s cool to have hobbies and interests you actually care about
As I near the end of my sophomore year, I feel like I am at such a middle point. On one hand, high school feels like it was so long ago, but I also feel so far from being a “real adult.” While college has certainly been the most freeing experience of my life and a time of incredible growth, I also feel like I’m losing myself. I can feel my personality from high school slipping away and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I am happy to be growing up and embracing where I am right now but I also feel farther from my true interests and the media that defined my teenage years. While I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself to be part of a fandom or go overboard with my love of TV or music, my childhood bedroom is a shrine to Harry Styles and Taylor Jenkins Reid and everything plant related. I felt much more connected to those things in high school than I do to really any interest I have now.
I somehow feel like I have way more time to engage with the things I love now and yet cannot seem to get as involved in them. In grappling with this feeling, I’ve come to realize that while I do love all of the new things I am involved in, I feel like I am morphing into everyone I know beyond a healthy level of agreement.
So, I feel I need to make a change. These are the things I plan to do to get my personality back without reverting to my high school self. If you feel the way I do, maybe they will help you too.
Most importantly, I am giving myself permission to speak up and share my true opinions about activities, media and anything else that comes up in conversation. So much of acclimating to college is about wanting to fit in and wanting to find common ground among people you do not know very well. However, that does not mean you cannot have opinions and the people who truly appreciate you for who you are will not hold that against you. I’ll start that right here. I am not a dog person. I love crossword puzzles. I think pineapple belongs on pizza.
Secondly, I am choosing to be intentional about how I spend my free time and the content I consume. I am frankly sick of being “influenced.” I want to discover what I like rather than having someone tell me what I “need” to buy next. Setting a goal to watch more TV may seem counterintuitive, but taking the time I spend scrolling social media and spending it finding a new favorite show will make me feel like the 14 year old kid discovering shows like Parks and Rec and Seinfeld for the first time.
Lastly, I plan to embrace new things I love and allow them to become a visible part of my personality. While I’m a bit unsure of the specifics of implementing this, I know it can start by continuing to make even temporary college apartments feel like they represent me. I’ve become much craftier since coming to college, and that should show up in my apartment.
Overall, I think I’ve lost the art of having a healthy obsession with the things I love in the pursuit of having a palatable personality or seeming like a “cool girl” to anyone I meet. Your interests define you. I don’t want to be chill about them anymore. It is cool to love random things both popular and unpopular. And it’s even cooler to know a crazy amount about those things. It is time to return to proudly having hobbies and loving media.