It's Not That Deep

“ I suppose what I’m getting at is that, one way or the other, I never entirely fitted in. I was immature in some ways and overly mature in others. Adults assumed I was capable because, by now, I was tall and good at exams and well behaved in class, but really I was just trying to work things out and I still barely knew myself. I always felt something of an outsider. ” —Elizabeth Day, How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong This personal essay is brought to you in part by this iconic and timeless quote from Kat Stratford in the iconic and timeless film 10 Things I Hate About You . As I’ve gotten older, I’ve often found myself feeling stifled by expectations: the expectations of others and the expectations of the world, combined with my own expectations for myself. And I’ve learned that much of the reason behind why I’ve felt stifled by expectation is because I didn’t realize how much of a people-pleaser I had become. In her book How to Fail , El

“ Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own, and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That’s why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe. ” —Benjamin Alire Sáenz *Tina Fey in Mean Girls voice* How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by seasonal depression in the summer? The general consensus and sweeping generalization is that the vast majority of people suffer from seasonal depression—also known by its official term, seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—in the winter months, when there is less sunlight and the days are shorter, and this typically causes people to fall into what we commonly call the “winter blues.” That is very much true for a lot of people. Winter blues is an actual psychological condition, and there has been a wide variety of research into the