Most people tell you to make mistakes. Few tell you why.
You're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to want to bury your head in the sand. Your cheeks will burn when you see certain people. You'll avoid certain places and it will feel like the world is out to get you. Then time will pass - minutes, hours, maybe months - and then you'll laugh.
The most embarrassing moments are the stories that you'll remember and you'll retell. Like the time I tripped over someone's leg in my geography lecture and fell face-first onto the ground. My professor was kind enough to call me out in front of everyone and I was forever known as the face planter.
You're going to do stupid things. Things that mean when you wake up the next morning, you'll pull your covers over your head and try your hardest to fall back asleep because you can't bear to think about how badly you messed up. Or you'll say something you'll immediately wish you could take back.
Like the time I made out with someone just because I thought he was from Australia. He was not.
It's after moments like these that you decide what kind of person you want to be, what person you'll most likely become.
You're going to hurt; you're going to cry. Whether you shed tears privately or publicly, it's during the hardest times that your true friends come to your aid, no matter how hard you try to push them away.
Sometimes it's the lowest points that bring you closer to people. It's when a friend believes in you when you can barely believe in yourself, when a friend calls you out for acting irrational when everyone else around you is walking on eggshells to keep you complacent, when a friend barges into your room and comforts you no matter how much you pretend you want to be left alone.
Or maybe it's when your friends take you to the hospital, stay with you all night - even though they might have been the reason you landed in the emergency room in the first place - let you sleep in their bed while they buy you an eye patch, or when they bring you dinner because you refuse to leave your room.
Most of all, you're going to learn - learn that sometimes the world just isn't fair, learn that no matter how open and carefree you are about your own life choices there will always be someone listening who will judge you.
But you'll also learn how to deal. You'll learn to deal because you have friends who will let you watch Star Wars in the living room even if they can't tell the difference between Darth Vader and Darth Maul, you have coworkers who put up with your hangovers and your (seemingly alarming) drunk texting addiction, you have family who tell you when you're being a b**** or need to reevaluate your current life decisions.
Without mistakes, life is dull. Without mistakes, how can you grow as a person?
So try things: taste every food in the dining hall, attend club meetings that you don't think you'd enjoy, talk to the students sitting next to you, go to parties and go to bars, watch the sunrise on top of a construction site (I'd tell you to go to the one I climbed, but it's now Kapoor Hall).
I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. Life is not perfect. The best you can do is learn to adapt.
I'll never deny the stupidity of some of my actions throughout my four years at UB. I could write pages and pages on the subject - I probably will some day.
But please, do not spend your college career stuck inside your dorm room. The closer the graduation date gets, the more you realize how little time you actually had during the most experimental and monumental time of your life.
So go out and make mistakes because trust me, if I survived my own stupidity, so can you.
Email: lyzi.white@ubspectrum.com
