On starting over

As the month of August progresses, we (class of 2017) move forward to what will be our second to last year of school. With the coming of this new year, us students have been granted the under-rated opportunity to- without sounding overly dramatic- start over.

This chance of beginning again, of pressing the reset button, is one that we don't get too often. For once we get a clean slate, allowing us to leave old habits behind and create a new name for ourselves. But still, something leaves me questioning, how genuine is this clean slate? 

Throughout our lives, we create a reputation for ourselves, as we meet people they begin to form what we call expectations of behavior. Even though these expectations may seem harmless at the moment, they do, limit and categorize us in some way. While they won't always be negative in effect, they can strain us from learning opportunities; which is something I have seen happening in these few weeks of school. 

For instance, I take into account the first day of I-week in the Innovation Academy; where teachers gave us a task to accomplish and guided us towards dividing into roles. For the purpose of this anecdote, you must understand that I am someone with a great eye for design, and one could say, a passion for it too. I tend to place myself in projects that involve aesthetics, but after a while of repeating this tendency, other people have begun to build this expectation. So, when the time of dividing into roles came upon, everybody already expected me to take part in the design team, which as you can imagine, I did. 

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that others' thoughts drove me into doing something I disagreed with, I am also to blame. Much like other people expected this from me, I am also part of this group of behaviour. This habit that I have formed can also be called a comfort zone, and when the time of dividing into roles came, I did not choose to escape it.   

But still, I wonder, if a genuine clean slate was given, then how come my reputation still followed me? Maybe if nobody expected me to behave some way, maybe if I didn't expect that from myself, I might have been more likely to try another experience. And even though I learned a lot from being on the website design team, by opening my mind to a less known role I could have still  broadened my insight. After all, we learn from these new experiences.