What no one tells you before entering high school is that you’ll experience the overwhelming feeling of needing to find yourself. Before I entered high school, I never thought much of it. I was scared, scared of what people thought of me, scared that the void that consumed middle school me would also take over high school me. I wanted things to be perfect and normal, from the friend groups to the high school experience. I was more interested in the outcome than the process of it all. As high school went on I realized it was never meant to be picture perfect. The fear I carried still lingered with me when walking into classrooms, hallways, even in raising my hand to participate. The fear had forced me to confront parts of me I didn’t know or understand. I learned that finding yourself isn’t about reaching a common end goal but paving ways through uncomfortable situations often without realizing, shape who you become. Like many students, we are more focused on surviving each moment than understanding exactly what these moments are teaching us.
That realization changed the way I viewed myself and the environment around me. I started to understand that fear wasn’t just something you can eliminate, but it was something that revealed where growth was needed. The same moments that made me uncomfortable like speaking up and being vulnerable are the same moments that shaped me into the person I am today. Finding myself wasn’t about becoming someone brand new but uncovering pieces of myself that fear had buried this entire time. Some BSGE students shared how fear influenced their high school experience. One junior shared that they spent most of their freshman year trying to blend in with everyone, explaining “I feel like if I stood quiet, people wouldn’t judge me as much or make assumptions about the person that I am”. Another student had shared how fear shaped who they were by saying “I was so worried about what people thought that I changed the way I acted which took me a while to realize that I wasn’t being true to myself or who I knew I was”. A third student revealed how finding their voice came from a place of discomfort rather than confidence by stating “the moment where I was most scared to speak were the ones that actually helped me grow the most”.
Being authentic means allowing yourself to get out there and be uncomfortable by doing things you don’t normally do. These experiences reveal that your identity is ultimately formed in silence before it is expressed out loud. Like many students, confidence didn’t just come from perfection, but from slowly choosing authenticity over fear. High school isn’t about becoming an entirely new person, it’s about finding who you truly are.
