Mrs. West often puts motivational quotes on her whiteboard for the week. A few weeks ago she had written, “You are Vis, too”. This got me thinking–I think a lot of people have crafted in their minds who a Vis girl is supposed to be. It may vary from person to person, but I think that it’s universal to have some sort of idea.
While this is a normal, human way of trying to categorize what sort of people you might find at a certain place, for example, finding athletes in a gym or cooks in a kitchen, I think it can be pretty detrimental. For me, the definition of a Vis girl goes beyond a bagel-bringing, homework-doing, and coffee-drinking girl. For a long time, I felt like I didn’t fit what I thought was a Vis girl. I had made a Vis girl into some impossible golden girl that I could obviously never be. My definition would change as the months passed, but it would never describe me.
This is the result of many things: comparison, competition, and struggles with self-worth. I think I can speak for a lot of people in saying that we struggle with who we are supposed to be in relation to where we go to school. Creating a perfect Vis girl in our minds, though, is completely pointless. While I might have been coming to school each day feeling like I didn’t fit the definition of a Vis girl, someone else may have been looking at me as the perfect example of one. Or someone who I thought was a great example of a Vis girl may have been feeling completely out of place too.
The very logical answer is that just by going to Vis, we are Vis girls; that’s it. That’s the maximum qualification that we have to meet. We don’t have to act a certain way, have certain things, or have certain interests. It sounds simple, but it’s hard to carry out in the moment when we don’t always feel like we are measuring up. Vis is a melting pot of all kinds of people with different interests, backgrounds, and personalities. Somehow we all come together and make it work, encouraging each other and building connections. It’s more exciting to come to school each day when you know it’s not going to be boring. What makes school interesting is getting to interact with people who have different talents and interests.
This is something that I will have to continue to remind myself over and over again because it’s not easy. I want to make the most of my time here and to do that I have to let myself be a part of the community. Vis becomes stronger when multiple types of people are able to contribute. It takes a lot of courage but also a lot of hope. I challenge each of us to put aside that image of who we think a Vis girl is and be proud of the fact that we already are one.
So to answer the question “Who is a Vis girl, really?”, it’s you.