By The Editorial Board
Braving the dining hall alone is a feeling many of us remember, and some are still experiencing. You begged your roommate to go with you, but they weren’t hungry. So, there you were, faced with a dilemma: You could either go alone or you could starve.
A big step in college students’ quest is learning to do things on their own. No, not doing laundry without your mother, but being a self-sufficient human being. This means being able to go places, do things and live your life no matter what others are doing. It means being able to forge your own path with or without company.
The fear of judgment can stand in the way of independence and self-reliance. If you sit alone in the dining hall, will everyone else think you’re a loser? If you sit alone with your Chick-fil-A in the Bill Daniel Student Center, will people think you have no friends to eat with?
A lot of us end up filling that insecurity with the comfort and company of other people — our friends, our roommates, etc. While this impulse is natural early on, you can’t hold onto it forever.
Being on your own is like a broken bone. At first, it hurts — a lot. It’s uncomfortable and you feel vulnerable as you wobble around on crutches, aware of the limping and the slow movement. But, like any broken bone, you lose the crutches and you start to walk on your own. You come out stronger on the other side.
That is not to say relationships with other people don’t matter, and we don’t need others in our lives. In fact, a lot of growth you undergo during your college years comes from others. The love of your friends, family or partner, the things they teach you and the support you can always count on are some of the most meaningful things to have in your life. But independence is wrapped in self worth, which nobody else can give you but you.
Your time at Baylor will teach you many things. You’ll leave with a degree and a load of wisdom you never knew you didn’t have when you first arrived. Let one of those lessons be this — being on your own to a certain degree is a part of life. Independence is a good thing, necessary even, and doesn’t have to be a lonely feeling.
The key to finding independence is getting over the things that hold you back, whether that be fear of judgment, shyness or nerves. Finding a good coping mechanism will work wonders and make the unpleasant experiences more doable. One mechanism is plugging in headphones and listening to music while in the dining hall or at the grocery store, but the things that bring comfort will differ for everyone.
College is the halfway house between the attachment and dependence of life with your parents and the wide-open independence of post-graduate life. It’s a good time to work on fostering your independence now, while you still have the leniency of being in college and the fail-safe of family.
