Don’t Fit In, Stand Out Have you ever tried to be so perfect at something and it ended up going all wrong? I have. In the essay “So What’s So Bad About Being So-So? ” by Lisa Wilson Strick (205-207) she makes the point that being perfect doesn’t always turn out the way you hope. I completely concur with her. Perfection can often be a wonderful thing, but for me, perfection caused me to have a very low confidence and so it became a vice in my life. Rather then being myself, I was too concerned about trying to be like everyone else around me and it turned out to be a huge mistake.
In Strick’s essay, she mentions that “Competition keeps getting in the way. ” (207). This statement is very true for me. In my situation, my competition was all the high school students that surrounded me. I wanted to be more like them, rather then just being myself. Nonacceptance from my fellow students I looked up to and wanted to be like, made me hate everything about myself. I felt so out of place and knew I did not belong. I went to school everyday dreading what was going to happen and who was going to make fun of me.
I became so involved in trying to be like everyone else around me I stopped concentrating on everything that mattered to me the most. I began to stop dancing and hanging out with my friends, and I also began to let my grades slip from straight A’s to C’s. I was so caught up with being liked that I really ended up losing sight in who I truly was. In Strick’s essay, she talks about a few joggers in their expensive jogging outfits and running shoes. She mentions that since she did not have all the expensive attire she was classified as “mediocre” to them (206).
That’s exactly how I felt when I went to school. I didn’t have all the name brand clothing and shoes. My family was to poor to afford it. We went clothes shopping at Wal-Mart and to everyone that could afford the name brand things made fun of me for it. All I wanted was to be liked by the popular crowd and the price it cost me was losing focus on everything else going on around me. I tried so many different things just to be liked and none of them worked. I tried wearing more makeup and doing my hair. I tried smoking cigarettes and being rude to my teachers just to stand out and get attention.
None of it worked. I was always going to be known as the girl who could never fit in. I was trying so hard that I made everyone who was always there for me not want to be around me anymore. I hardly ever talked to my parents or the rest of my family because there was only one thing on my mind which was ‘I got to find a way to fit in and stand out. ’ In the essay I mentioned earlier the author brings up a little nine year old girl who has so much going on she didn’t have any time to be a kid and play (207).
In a way, that’s how I felt. No time to do anything else but to try and be part of the “in” crowd. Striving so hard to be perfect made me lose my self-esteem. Thinking I was the worst looking person in the world and caring so much about what people thought of me, no one really got to know the real me. I didn’t even know the real me. I was depressed everyday and I wanted to die. I even tried killing myself a few times because I felt like no matter how hard I tried I would never be liked.
Which caused my family to worry so much about me that it almost tore them apart. In Strick’s essay she brings up a few dancers being “snobbish” and if you couldn’t dance like them you weren’t one of them (206). This how it was for me. Being one of the people that just like to dance but can’t dance as well as the professionals. Although for me, it was trying to part of the crowd and not being accepted. In the end, I found out that I needed to have more faith in myself and not be so concerned about what other people thought about me.
I am now completely happy with everything about myself and finally found out who I really am. I’m a fun, loving person with a bubbly personality and I would have never known that if I was to keep pursuing perfection. Now that I figured that out, I’m not depressed anymore and my family isn’t so worried about me. I’m now living life the way I want to and I actually fit in and stand out. Who knew that in order for people to like you all you had to do was be yourself? Knowing that would have saved me so much time and so many mistakes.
In Strick’s essay, she states that she knows that she’s not perfect at everything and she’s perfectly happy with it (207). I can honestly say that I can now relate to that. I’m perfectly happy with myself and my life as well as everything and everyone in it. I spent many years trying to be someone that I couldn’t be and even if I was, I wouldn’t have been happy. I learned the hard way that just being yourself will get you so much farther then trying to be that perfect person everyone wants you to be.
Lisa Wilson Strick mentions in her essay that we need to “rediscover the joy of creative fooling around. ” (207). Don’t worry about what other people think about you. Be yourself not someone else. So just remember to be true to yourself and if being perfect isn’t working out, just believe in who you are and you will be much happier with yourself as well as your life. Work Cited Strick, Lisa Wilson. “So What’s So Bad About Being So-So? ” Steps To Writing Well With Additional Readings Editor, Jean Wyrick. 8th ed. Boston: Wadsworth- Cengage, 2010. 205-207. Print.
