There’s something to say about a place that changes your definition of comfort in just a month. COSMOS 2011 was not a summer program, a camp, or a school. It was a home, a sanctuary, and a confidant. COSMOS 2011 was an honest experience, one that will always be considered a turning point in the line of who I was to who I know I will be.
I walked onto the UC Santa Cruz campus with uncertainty. Not only was it a new place, with new people, new ideas, and new competition, but it was a place away from Clovis and everyone else that was left there. In arriving at UCSC, I was running away from people, issues, worry, and unease. I left behind self-esteem issues, relationship issues, doubts, insecurities, and fears. I disconnected myself from Clovis, and in doing so, disconnected myself from who I had been for the last 16 years of my life. That’s not to say I wasn’t honest while at COSMOS, but rather, I allowed myself to be who I wanted to be, and not who I had always been.
At COSMOS, I didn’t have to be the smart girl who sat in the corner with her book and highlighter. I didn’t have to be the girl whose friends were disconnected from her or the girl who was too uncomfortable to get close to people. At COSMOS, I didn’t have to be insecure and vulnerable and doubtful. At COSMOS, I allowed myself to be the confident one.
In being the confident one, COSMOS taught me a number of things. It taught me how to be loud and strong and beautiful. It taught me to dance in front of a group of people just because it made me feel good. It taught me to smile at strangers, to hold a boy’s hand, to scream in forests, to cover myself in mud and sand and dirt because it feels good not to be in control all the time. COSMOS taught me how to be happy and alive and willing.
By being willing, my life changed. I allowed myself to be inspired and I allowed myself to be encouraged. The people I met at COSMOS were some of the most determined, intelligent, beautiful, and rightful people I have ever had the opportunity to know. They were right, in ways of education and society. And they were honest, allowing me to experiment and explore.
Coming out of the whole experience, I have never felt more confident and whole in the person that I am. I have never been so comfortable and I have never been so sure of the rest of my life. COSMOS gave me a strength nothing else could have mustered. COSMOS allowed me to decide my fate and my reputation. For the first time, I was exactly who I wanted to be and no one else. Thank you, COSMOS 2011, you are commensurate to all of my wonder.
