I will not lie, I will not deny, that I have been a victim of peer pressure. People like to deny being a victim of it, for what reason I do not know, but I have been a victim a few times. Lets flash back to my freshman year of college... I went through a three-month period that was like a point in time where I experimented with different social groups, settings, and activities. I admit that I was going through a breakup at this time and I showed out a lot afterwards, but it was not until I had peer pressure, that I was more so "encouraged and eager" to indulge in all these different things. For new college students, I hope you recognize that it is a lot easier to slip into peer pressure than you may think. Peer pressure could simply be hanging in an environment surrounded by blunts and alcohol, and when you see everyone indulging in it, you feel out of place being the only one doing what is considered "the goody-goody thing". I was eighteen during my freshman year of college, and I met this girl that I referred to as my twin. She was my twin in a sense where we shared the same name, but we were complete opposites. She walked around with the personality that I hid and locked away inside me, and who I was, was how she actually was behind closed doors. I hung around her a lot and she pretty much experienced a lot of things that I never even thought of. I decided to take a trip down to her city one weekend for partying, and that started my three-month road to peer pressure turned stupidity. When I got down there, we got dressed up for this club/hookah lounge and that is where I met this older guy that put me onto a lifestyle that I was blind to. The very first time I really felt peer pressure was sitting in his car watching everyone smoke and drink before entering the club.... I didn't try anything at first, but the moment they looked my way and asked, I shrugged and drank and smoked because I knew that I was quiet and a boring person to party with when sober. From then on, I had no problem smoking and drinking, and I eventually didn't need him or her to do either. Peer pressure can be the start to a slippery slope and those experiences are why I am smart about what I do, who I hang around, and what I take. I learned through that scenario and others that I cannot handle even an ounce of alcohol. I also learned that I cannot tolerate smoking either, so whether it is done or not, I prefer to be around family and/or someone that I really trust. Peer pressure will cause you to make mistakes... and some mistakes have no ability to be fixed. As you go through college, I encourage you to be solid on the fact that you have your OWN mind and that it is okay to say no... whether you are on the journey to finding yourself or not, understand that it is still okay to say no until you understand the consequences of those things if you do choose to do them. You can be peer pressured to have sex with those late night campus texts from college boys, or you can be peer pressured to simply take on a shift for your co-worker because everybody knows that you are free. It happens... A highly overseen and downplayed problem on college campuses: peer pressure.
Girlfriends was by far one of the best television shows that I grew up watching, and still watch to this day... and when I think about the type of women/social circle that I would like to be around, Joan, Toni, Mya, and Lynn is exactly what it would look like. I remember starting off the sixth grade and traveling up until high school with a huge social circle filled with all these different types of girls and young women with varied personalities, values, and beliefs. Throughout that time, my social circle remained large, but there were some tweaks here and there and some people were not meant to last. What I mean is, we outgrow some relationships, we drain out some relationships, and we sometimes stop putting forth the effort to keep up effective relationships. Over the course of those years, I developed a lot of meaningful relationships and developed a slight sense of what type of people I wanted to be surrounded by. One of the major adjustments that I had throughout graduat...
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