This is not a specific time, but during my first year at Duke, I went through a mindset shift and really attached myself to the idea of doing things that make me happy as well as pursuing things that I want to do because I want to do them. I find comfort in the fact the people who I meet through being true to myself are the people I am going to have the deepest relationships with. Relationships are what I value over most other things, and the best way to have those relationships be genuine is to have a really good sense of myself first. This mentality has only gotten stronger as I have moved through Duke, and I continue to work on prioritizing this. This is definitely very different from how I interacted in high school, and this shift has changed the trajectory of my life.
