Finding Myself

I roomed with a girl named Jenn a year ago in college during my last semester.  Tomorrow, Jenn is going to study abroad in Ireland for three months.  She created a blog with which to record her adventures across the pond.  In her first entry of said blog, Jenn wrote that she was hoping to use this trip to "find herself."  I was faced with this phrase over and over again during my college career.

And I hate it.

What the hell does it mean for someone to find themself?  Are they lost?

During my first semester at Winthrop, I was required, as a final for a class, to create a presentation that completely represented myself.  This task, of course, is impossible.  But what I decided to do was to create a movie featuring photos and music of my family, friends and me.  It was unfortunate because this was the first time I had ever used Windows Movie Maker, which is now a favorite application of mine.  But three years ago I had no clue how to use it.  I was under the impression that, much like Word, if you saved the project, it simply opened in that same application on another computer.  This is incorrect.  What you have to do is convert the movie you save into another format so that it plays on another computer.  And so, I simply saved the movie project and when I got to my classroom after a solid week of working on this video, it wouldn't open and wouldn't play.  My teacher even ran me down to another classroom under the fear that it was the computer in our classroom that wasn't working.  But after the other computer couldn't open it, we gave up.  I returned to the classroom, facing students that were at least two, if not three, years younger than me due to a Winthrop-only requirement for this class, and proceeded to sadly give a poor monologue "representing" me.

During this monologue, I remarked that this project in no way helped me learn who I was (which was a central goal of the project), because I already knew who I was.

I still feel that way.  I don't have to do something to figure out who I am.  Not a school project, not a road trip, and not studying abroad.  I learn something new about myself everyday, whether it's something I already knew, a footnote to something I thought I knew, or something completely new, I learn everyday.

I think back to my freshman year of college, and how many of my opinions, my firm beliefs, and my tastes have changed so drastically.  I went through a time where I found out a lot about myself, but it wasn't college.  It was life.  And because of this life that God has given me and continues to give me, I find out more about myself everyday.  And so does everybody else.