The Effect of Change
Lily Pinto (she/her)
Editorial Team Member
Change - something that, for many people, isn’t seen as a good thing. It can feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, even scary. For me, when I think of change, I think of the physical action of altering an object, whether that means moving it or shaping it into something new, almost like a block of Play-Doh.
Play-Doh is meant to be shaped; you can roll it, flatten it, stretch it, alter it, and put it back together again. You can make it into anything that you want to. You can turn it into a person, a flower, an animal, or something that doesn’t even have a name. And no matter what you do to it, it can always revert to its original form. But somehow, it’s still different. It’s been stretched, moved, and reshaped. It’s been through something. And we don’t criticize it for changing; we expect it to. And in some way, aren’t we the more tangible version of Play-Doh?
As students, we are constantly being shaped, whether that be through the things we learn, the years that we encounter, the friendships we make, or the experiences that we have. Every new class, every new person, and every new challenge leaves some kind of mark on us. Sometimes we notice those changes happening, and sometimes we don’t realize how much we’ve changed until we look back.
We enter high school as one version of ourselves but leave shaped by everything we experienced along the way. The person walking into their first day of freshman year probably had a completely different idea of who they were than the person walking across the stage four years later. We change our interests, our goals, our opinions, our friendships, and even the way we view ourselves. We grow into different versions of ourselves without always realizing that it’s happening.
I know that if the version of me from a year ago could talk to me now, they’d be totally shocked by everything I’m currently doing. Whether that’s the extracurriculars I’m involved in, the people I’ve become friends with, or even the things I care about now, so much of my life looks different than it did before, and I think that’s what makes the changes we go through in just a year so remarkable.
Just like Play-Doh, we’ve changed. We’ve been through things—obstacles, challenges, failures, successes, and moments that have forced us to reshape ourselves. But we’ve also grown. Those same challenges that we faced changed how we came out on the other side. Maybe we became more confident. Maybe we learned something about ourselves. Maybe we realized what we wanted—or, just as importantly, what we didn’t want. I think we forget that growth is a good thing.
We’ve been taught to view change as something to be cautious of, as though becoming different means becoming worse. But what if we aren’t losing who we are? What if we’re simply becoming someone who we couldn’t have been before?
Maybe the version of ourselves we were yesterday wasn’t meant to be the version we stayed forever. Maybe every experience, every mistake, every friendship, and every challenge is just another hand shaping us into something new.
What if, in reality, we are growing into the person that we’re supposed to become?
Maybe we aren’t meant to stay the same shape.
Maybe we were never supposed to.
Change - something that, for many people, isn’t seen as a good thing. It can feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, even scary. For me, when I think of change, I think of the physical action of altering an object, whether that means moving it or shaping it into something new, almost like a block of Play-Doh.