To my Gamecock community:
My aspiration for IfYoureReadingThisUofSC is that my letter will be the first of many. I hope the collection we build together will share words of inspiration, vulnerability, and honesty. Thank you for letting me share my words with you. This community is special, so let’s continue to open up this dialogue and show understanding and kindness towards one another.
If you’re reading this, be open to change.
Flashback to four years ago: Summer orientation in 2018 here at the University of South Carolina. I had the same feelings 99% of incoming freshmen have. Nervousness, excitement, and curiosity.
I grew up going to a small school my entire life. I was fortunate enough to know everyone like they were my own family, but that meant they knew everything about me too. Such a small environment had pros and cons. At graduation, I remember my brother asking me, “How do you feel about going to a school where not everyone knows your name for once?”. Entering a university, literally one thousand times bigger than mine, was exciting to me. I wanted to be another number, I craved anonymity. I wanted to be in a place where people didn’t know everything about me all the time, I didn’t really want to meet my professors, I wanted to make some friends, be a normal college kid, blend in the background, and just get my degree.
At the end of my orientation session, one of the speakers asked
“What do you want to leave behind at South Carolina?”
Easy answer for 18-year-old me. Nothing. Simple. I thought his question was cliche and frankly, a bit cheesy. Reflecting back on that, I understand why I felt that way. I didn’t know what was in store for me so “nothing” was the safe answer. Naive, but safe.
The more time I spent at South Carolina, the more I fell in love with my community. I joined an organization that pushed me to grow into a leader that I never thought I could be. The space I was in fostered my ambitions and pushed me out of my comfort zone. I met new people, I worked hard, and I worked on myself. I, for the first time, felt like I could breathe. I was away from all the high expectations I felt placed on myself before and became comfortable with the idea that my mindset and perspectives weren’t set in stone. In fact, I learned the importance of growth, openness, and vulnerability in this new environment. I was getting out all the work I was putting in. I was changing in my little cocoon. This newfound freedom felt like a blank canvas and I could paint myself however I wanted. It was a beautiful feeling. The reality was refreshing.
Yet, I realized that I was one of the extremely lucky ones and that things weren’t so much sunshine and rainbows for everyone else. I met people who struggled with their own demons, ones they didn’t deserve, and needed a community to be able to embrace them too, openly and without judgment. As well, I learned that just telling people to “be positive” and that “it’ll get better” is just like hanging a picture over a hole in the wall. Picture perfect on the outside, but still broken beneath the surface. There needed to be a way to have these raw conversations without the stigmas that surrounded mental health.
It takes real conversations to uncover the truth. Things get hard. We are all in the same boat in college, just a bunch of kids trying to figure it out some way, somehow. The greatest thing about college: that it’s entirely okay to not know who you’re going to become. It’s okay to be unsure, confused, scared, and lost. The people that sit next to you in class, that live beside you in your dorm, or that you barely know through a mutual friend and you follow on Instagram and keep weirdly running into on campus, I guarantee you they feel the same way too. No matter how put together anyone may seem, we all have doubts, insecurities, goals, and dreams. The bright side of this chaos is that everyone around you is going through this metamorphosis phase too. We are meant to change. There’s a great sense of comfort I find in that.
Don’t be fooled, I had found amazing things here but I still cracked too. My second year of college, I ran myself empty. I stopped taking care of myself. I dove into everything I could without realizing the damage I was doing to my own wellbeing. I could not keep these high expectations I felt before at bay. Balancing a job, classes, a social life, a leadership position, and everything in between while trying to give 100% of myself to it all was not feasible. I lost myself in all I was doing. Everything became too much, too heavy, and the weight of trying to be perfect at everything came crashing down. I was trying too hard to pour into every other cup of my life when my own cup was empty.
It took the community around me, the friends and family who loved and cared for me, and a step back from the fast-paced world college sucks you into, to teach me to keep my cup full, or else I couldn’t do the things I wanted in the way they deserved to be done. It hit me hard, but sometimes that’s the reality check you need. It taught me the importance of balance in life. Again, something I consider myself very lucky to have learned.
Fast-forward to May 2021. I realize that I’m graduating in a year and that question I heard at orientation now floats back into my head:
“What do you want to leave behind at South Carolina?”
At this point, I realized I had met so many people along the way in just 3 years. Every perspective shared with me had taught me something new. How could we reflect that type of impact? What could I do to give something back to the community that had given me so much? I knew the importance of being there for people, but how could we scale that up a notch?
As if the universe heard my mind, I luckily stumbled upon IfYou’reReadingThis.org. This was it.
This organization was my pivot point. I was okay with being 1/35,000 yes, but this allowed me to be a part of something that maybe would impact the other 34,999 people I was surrounded by. 34,999 is ambitious though, so I shifted the idea. Just one.
If this organization would be the thing to leave behind, and it helped just one person, then that would be enough. The stories we share and the one reader that this may help would make our mission truly successful.
If You’re Reading This amplifies the fact that you’re never alone. Sharing these perspectives and hearing others' stories taught me that. I hope that the sharing of these letters will do the same for all readers. I’ve had amazing help so far along the way and I can’t wait to see what this turns into for our community. I know this organization already has taught me personally my story of changing will never be finished, and that’s perfectly okay.
I hope these letters inspire you to be open to new ideas, embrace the community you’re in, and understand that where you are in life is intentional. No matter what year you are, there’s so much beauty in the people of the UofSC community and I encourage you to seek out all it has to offer. Ask for help if you need it, or be the person to start those conversations. Be open, be vulnerable, and continue to grow. That’s what we are all here to do. It truly takes a village.
Heddy M., University of South Carolina Class of ‘22
