Remember Who You Are

     Now that you are finally away from your parents and moral guardians, how will you uphold their teachings?  Will you grip those morals and values you've been taught all your life even though you don't have eyes watching you anymore? Or, will you now tear them up and throw them away because secretly you've been wanting to abandon them the entire time? This is really a serious question because college is the moral test for every humane thing you had ever learned up until this point. Every time I left the house for an event, no matter how long, I always heard a couple sayings from my parents in a firm tone: "Alright, remember what you've been taught... Act like you got some sense... Don't do anything you may regret later..." I bet a lot of other people can agree with constantly hearing these cautions.

     College is naturally a challenge to your upbringing and identity.  Why? As I read from a SparkNotes article, a couple lines from paragraph 2 caught my attention:
          Being critical of what you see and hear means pondering ideas in new ways and allowing   that experience to enrich the way you already think.  As your knowledge and experience of the outer world expands, your inner world expands too.

To paraphrase, your identity can be challenged and possibly enriched by coming in contact with people from different backgrounds, social behaviors, and by the activities going on around you. You can embrace another culture and assimilate it into your own or reject it but still acknowledge it.  You can say no to fitting in with the rest of society (or friends) by avoiding its music, create your own fashion style, or by avoiding its slang. Ultimately, you can choose to say no or give in to the peer pressures you'll be faced with everyday of your college career.  If you don't feel morally obligated to say no to those negative social pressures, you are free to do them and try to rediscover your identity. 

So always be mindful of the things you do in college that may effect your self-perception and personal identity. Be even more mindful of the social perception of you in college. When you go to college, you are a representative of your parents, moral guardians, community, and your school.  When others view you, they also view everything you represent since you reflect those morals and values.