OLIVIA PENNINGTON

that I knew would be a good influence on me. Dropping people who I was previously close with was hard, but I knew doing it was the only way I was going to change how I was.

Two weeks after I came back to Green, Covid happened and everyone was quarantined. I have always been a very extroverted person and thought that being inside and not being able to see my friends would be torture. The first couple days were alright, thinking that being stuck in the house was only going to last a couple days to weeks, max. Realizing that this was going to last a lot longer than everyone thought, I wasn't mentally prepared for how intense the situation actually was, and I was hit with a large wave of depression and loneliness. There were many days that I wouldn't come out of my room until my mom called me downstairs for dinner, and others where I didn't come out at all.

During this time, I knew that I needed to change the way I was living, but it was very difficult for me to stay motivated and take initiative. My parents started noticing that I was acting very differently and encouraged me to take a path that was going to lead me towards success. Thinking about their advice, I realized that the change I wanted to make wasn't going to happen overnight and that I would need to take baby steps.

By the beginning of my sophomore year, my parents and I saw major improvements in myself that started off as a couple minor changes. However, I encountered a couple setbacks, each affecting me in different ways. The biggest setback was a result of foolishness on the internet that both hindered, and possibly counteracted, my personal growth and led to severe consequences. These consequences, while being annoying to deal with at the time, led to my realization that behaviors and attitudes that were made more common in quarantine through social media were not acceptable back in the real-world environment. With that, the rest of my sophomore year I was very careful with what I said, not only in real life but also online.

I started off my junior year with a good vision of how I wanted it to go, but I still made a few mistakes. I used to beat myself up over mistakes or things that I've done wrong, but throughout the years, I've started using my mistakes as ways to grow and become a better person. By changing how I treated myself when I would make mistakes, I became more understanding towards myself, treating myself with the same compassion and leniency I would give others when they made mistakes.

I used to think that being hard on myself would motivate me to do better, but in the end, it made me feel even worse. These mistakes have helped me realize when I'm in the wrong, or thinking about doing something that I'm not sure is the best idea or not. Admitting to being wrong has also always been hard for me, but knowing that I'm in the wrong, whether I admit to it or not, is still better than not knowing that what I'm doing is unacceptable. Self-awareness is an admirable trait to have, not only in high school, but in the real world too. Being self-aware makes me feel a lot more grounded, gives me confidence, and has let me understand things from multiple perspectives.

Now that I’m going to college in a few months, I plan to apply these traits that I’ve learned over these past four years of highschool to continue growing into the person I’m designed to be.