Because of high school centered movies, such as High School Musical, along with the idea that life ought to be sing-songy and that people would dance throughout the hallways, I always had the idea that high school was the place where students would suddenly find themselves and that everything that really mattered in life would suddenly click into place.

The summer before my freshman year, it became my personal goal not only to find my permanent place in society, but also to find or make who I was (I wasn’t quite sure which would take place first). Although I still have one and a half years left before I graduate, I have not yet achieved my goal and doubt I will, given the small amount of allotted time.

I initially thought that “finding myself” would entail discovering one specific color or trait to identify myself with, much like how people associate the Pink Power Ranger with the color pink. It took me close to a year before I realized how unrealistic it was for a person to fit into only one “topic” or “area”. I will never have one category to latch onto – color or personality trait or prefered activity or any other characteristic – and neither will anyone else. Not a single person can solely be “an art kid” or “a band person” or just “one” of anything.

I find the way people dismiss others with a “oh, she’s just one of those girls” type of comment interesting because in reality, no one qualifies as just anything. So many specific elements make up a person, I can’t imagine someone falling directly into a stereotype and completely fulfilling the expected role. Even if a few individuals are naturally capable of it, people are so diverse that there shouldn’t be enough of those for the stereotype to even exist. Personal memories, ambitions, insecurities, accomplishments, mannerisms, and many other things stop people from being stuck solely in one way of thinking or behaving.

People do not fit into just one, or even two, word divisions. Just like the Pink Power Ranger has more qualities than simply being “pink”, people have more qualities than just being “social,” “annoying,” or any other seemingly adequate adjective that attempts to encompass and categorize them in a simple and manageable way. People don’t exist that simply, and we should treat them as such: unique, diverse people who exist as much more than what society often makes them out to be.