President's Perspective: Letting go of high school drama

Finally I have returned after almost two weeks out of the office, and to be honest, it's nice to be back. But the weather here SUCKS compared to what I was used to in sunny California.

Last weekend we had our board retreat. We went for two nights to Blue Mountain to teach the new SAC reps about the FSU and their roles and responsibilities as a whole for the next six months at Fanshawe College. And I must say, I was beyond impressed with this bunch of people. They are excited, they want to do a good job, and by golly, they are making the rest of us look bad.

Sometimes when you go on these retreats, you start talking about things you wouldn't say otherwise. It's almost as if you feel like since you are stuck in a situation (good or bad) with these people, if you talk about your issues it's going to be ok. And the issue I got talking about with a few people was high school.

In high school, I was…all right. I mean, I didn't have a lot of friends; I went to all my classes, got good grades. Had a job, played sports outside of the school. I would like to say I didn't really care about anything, but I did. I cared a lot about what people thought about me, and I hate looking back and realizing how much that didn't matter.

I dated this guy for pretty much my entire high school career. Since he went to another school we did our own thing. And because of that, I didn't make many friends at my own school.

Before my long-term high school boyfriend, I dated a guy who had dated one of my friends first. I asked her about it, and she said it would be fine, no worries. But apparently, one of her bitchy friends didn't think that was cool. She pretty much blacklisted me for the rest of high school. She made fun of me to my face in front of other people…it was horrible.

To this day, I cannot believe how much I let her hurt me. For a good year or so, I became very sensitive to what people thought and constantly worried about my appearance, how I was acting, who I was friends with, etc. Since I have become good friends with an old acquaintance of hers and I know that she has done absolutely nothing with her life, still lives at home, never went to school, and lost a lot of friends after high school (P.S. we graduated over four years ago from high school).

This weekend when I was talking about it, my point was as follows. I wasted a year worrying about something that didn't matter at all. Now I have adopted an attitude where I just don't care at all about what people think. And I actually don't care.

I do what I want, when I want, and I refuse to surround myself with negative people. If someone negative comes around, I just walk away. Simple as that.

It was one of the stupidest moves I made letting someone get to me like that, and I am stronger because I finally let that out this past weekend, and admitted to myself how much I was hurt and how much I actually cared about what this person thought. When in the big picture, it didn't matter at all.

Over the past six months I've made a friend who has the same view on this stuff as me, and we get along so well. It is great to have the experience of just doing “what I do” and keep moving in the direction I want to go. I think I am just fine the way I am. So hopefully all of you can let any of your high school drama go, whether you were the creator or receiver. That is the only way you will find out how great you are, and how great so many people think you are as well. Admitting something like this is hard even to yourself, because it's human nature not to want to show emotion, or not to want to appear weak. But the weight off your shoulders is an incredible feeling.