Whenever I get into our pool to go for a swim, I always end up thinking about and reflecting on my past and future. I'm not really sure why - to be honest, I think being outside has a cathartic effect on me - I know I definitely need to go outside and be more active outside more often, but whenever I do go outside, I feel its positive effects immediately. And I've reflected over a lot lately - most recently, about some of my fears. One fear I've always had is looking at the deep end of a pool. It's just something that has scared me ever since I was a little girl, and it still sometimes scares me. But when I told my Dad, he suggested to look directly at the deep side in order to get over my fear. It's something I'm slowly working on and hope to get over soon, because as I realized earlier this summer, there are things much more important than fears like these, ones that we can work towards getting over.

While swimming, I began to think of the parallels of something as simple as looking directly at the deep end of a pool to bigger fears, ones we can't control. And what I realized is that there are some things that you have to just do in order to get over them, especially the more tangible things. Yet some fears, ones that are related to emotions, are not as simple to have a clear-cut solution for.

For example, I was worried about the types of people I would meet in college, in fact, I was scared. Some of my closest friends are from high school, but a lot of my peers in high school were focused on only their grades, and forming cliques - and as a result, it was harder to connect with them because it felt as though they weren't focused on making new friends. I was scared the same would happen at Cal, but I am SO thankful that I have met people who share a similar mindset to me, and who I can confidently call great friends. The only thing I could do when coming to college was to be myself and hope to meet other unique people who were just being themselves as well.

I didn't want to get too deep, but since I was swimming in the deep end of the pool ... (that was super cheesy -- sorry!)