In high school, teachers would comment that I should learn to share my thoughts more often with my peers, speak up more in discussion settings. While this perhaps doesn’t seem that unusual (everyone feels different degrees of comfort in different settings), this tendency to speak and act in such drastically different contexts has actually been a large source of stress for me. But in other contexts, I can be extremely vocal, giddy and loud.

In fact, in many larger group settings, I’m never the one to speak loudest or try to be heard. In classroom settings, I’m fairly quiet, and speak pretty infrequently. One example of this contradiction is my introversion in some contexts and not in others. But one of the most powerful things we can do is acknowledge the fact that as human beings, we act and think in different ways in different contexts, and that’s actually okay and maybe even good. Contradictions within ourselves are not usually viewed in a positive light: We’re supposed to have strong opinions and act in a consistent way most of the time. While I love this quote, its application in real life is difficult. This quote, to me, has always been a beautiful way of describing the complexity that is human nature - the fact that we don’t exist in dichotomies, that we’re all infinitely complicated compilations of many different and sometimes conflicting thoughts and beliefs. “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict myself. One of the more commonly-known quotes that adorns my walls is from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: My dorm room is littered with sticky notes slapped on my desk and walls, with phrases from books or articles that have struck me as particularly inspiring. There’s something unbelievably powerful about reading something somebody else has said and feeling the chills rush up my spine as I realize it’s a perfect way of describing an experience I’ve had, or simply a beautifully brilliant compilation of words put together in exactly the right way.