#apieceofpaperdoesnotdefineyou

For the purpose of respecting privacy,  the person who has an influence on my life name’s will be replaced with the pseudonym ‘Maggie Richards’. I admire Maggie because of her mellifluous, analytical and dedicated character. Not only do I admire her personality, but I also respect her for the number of positions she takes in life.

Maggie Richards is a cheerleader, always right there when you need her. Shes there to motivate with her quirky dance moves and her uplifting personality; she is everything. I met Maggie freshman year in the bathroom after the Freshman Retreat and we bonded over the trip. The bathroom is the place where problems are usually flushed, it’s a personal space, where a lot of students debrief.

At the onset of this fateful encounter, I came into the bathroom crying and she happened to be there too. It was funny because she had just finished crying herself. I was crying because I was under a tremendous amount of stress, wondering about my “purpose in life” and “if I was going to make it” all because of one assignment. On the other hand, Maggie was crying because she had just found out that she was an undocumented student. That was when my heart dropped. After all of the years (three) I’d known her, this was a secret that I never would have expected. Then again, it was a secret to her as well, until earlier on that day.

The adversity of her journey added lens to my perspective because it made me recognize the relativity of my situation in that moment. While I was distraught over a single assignment, she was dealing with the question of whether or not she would be able to even attend college, continue her education and pursue her dreams. I realized in that moment that there are other things in life that are more catastrophic than not having your future planned out or not knowing exactly what one is good at.

How she handles adversity is what inspires me the most because it is something that I have always sought to improve within myself. She continues to add new things to her plate, walking through the buffet of life stronger and hungrier than ever. Before Maggie, I approached life more like a mall Food Court, tasting many opinions but never really committing to a single flavor. Maggie opened my eye to the beauty of the buffet and since then, I have never looked back. These days, I make the intentional decision to take on new commitments in my personal, social, and academic and I have learned that it is not so bad as long as I remember to keep things in perspective and take care of myself first and foremost. Maggie and I always run to each other when our plates get full and start to spill over on our lives. The plates represents a fusion of time and mental energy and each yummy dish added represents one of the many activities that fill up a day, week, or month. As a result of the beautiful friendship we have created, we get to walk through the buffet together, always picking items off of each other's plates.

In addition to the mental strength within that she helped me to discover, Maggie has also influenced the way in which I connect to my family and the community around me. In a generation that lives behind screens and closed doors, Maggie is truly family orientated which has inspired me to spend more time with my family as well. It’s difficult because by the time you reach the later years of High School, it is so easy to have accumulated years worth of annoyance or negative emotion towards your family; emotions that, if unchecked, can place a wedge between you and your loved ones that could last a lifetime.

Maggie is the youngest out of her kin and the amount of love and compassion that she shows every member of her family is truly inspiring. By being witness to what these relationships could look like, I was inspired to bring that same love and energy into my own household and the results have been life changing.