Author: Daysia Vargas

Highlight: I’ve always disliked school very deeply. I’ve always thought it was honestly never for me. After I graduated in 2018, I was so happy that it was done and over with.

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1 Unstoppable --by Daysia Vargas 2 “I’ve always disliked school very deeply. I’ve always thought it was honestly never for me. After I graduated in 2018, I was so happy that it was done and over with.” ____________________________________ Community college attended: CT State Community College Naugatuck Valley Location: Waterbury, Connecticut Date success story was submitted: 15 April 2025 Community college sponsor/mentor and college affiliation: Patrick Sullivan, English Department, CT State Community College Manchester Key search terms: mental health, returning adult student Academic major: Nursing HOW LIFE FELT BEFORE JOINING COMMUNITY COLLEGE As somebody who has always hated school, I am here to tell you that it does get better and that you will accomplish all and everything you put your mind to. I’ve always disliked school very deeply. I’ve always thought it was honestly never for me. After I graduated in 2018, I was so happy that it was done and over with. But on the other hand, I’ve always known that I wanted to join community college but again I just hated school so much, and thought I wasn’t capable, so I went a really long time without doing anything. Eventually life does catch up to you and before you know it, you’re an adult who’s now over the age of 21, still not knowing what direction to go 3 based off how you felt in middle and high school. Let’s just listen and re-read that over again, how you felt in MIDDLE and HIGH school. I know that feeling does follow you through life because I’ve lived it, where so many years just pass by and you kind of don’t even realize; but what you can’t do is let it take over your life. Even though it may feel like it is, I promise it’s not. School has made me feel alive and made life worth living again, which I thought would never ever come out of my mouth but truly it has made me feel unstoppable. A good life to me would mean being able to live every day happily, peacefully and freely. I would say that I probably have about eight different core values that guide me through my everyday life. Which are as follows: Loyalty, Family, Compassion, Respect, Success, Growth, Peace and Happiness. A good life for me would be waking up, taking my first breath of the day, brushing my teeth and showering to then go on to do what I love best, which would hopefully be my source of income. Spending time with my loved ones is very important to me as well.. Nothing will ever be better than being able to live in the moment and make memories with those you love and hold close to your heart. Every day I am grateful for life. I am grateful for those I still have around, and those who I have lost. While growing up I have been able to see the positives of life, as well as the negatives. Unfortunately, I’ve always felt as if I had more negatives than positives because of how many deaths I’ve experienced. At 14 years old I had my first loss, which was my grandfather. After that, everything just came crumbling down. I ended up losing my great grandmother, my great grandparents, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin. It felt like it was never going to end, I felt like my life was over. All those deaths one after another left me scarred. At one point I didn’t know what the point of living was. Until one day I went on a flight from Hartford to Miami after debating whether I should go or not being that it was right before my uncle's funeral. On that flight I felt so protected, as if there were people standing next to me and over me. From then on out I told myself that everything was fine, and that although I lost many, I gained just as many angels. I learned to appreciate life, memories, and those who I hold close to me. Now I see life as a gift. Life is something you should really take and make into whatever your heart desires. It’s very serious but can be very rewarding. I am very compassionate when it comes to anything I love. I tend to always pick up on when someone is off, when someone doesn’t want to be 4 somewhere, when someone has anxiety, when someone is sad, happy or angry etc. Because I am that someone. I know how it feels to be somewhere and feel out of place, or to be filled with anxiety. So, when I see someone's energy is off, I always put myself in their shoes before I ever think of judging them or how they’re acting. Respect is very important, that is something that everybody should have for themselves, and everyone they’re around. That is something you should be using in your everyday life, because not only do you have to respect the family that you’re around, but you also must respect people on the outside that may be way different from you or your family. One thing I stand on with respect, though, is that it’s earned not given. You cannot be overly or even a little bit disrespectful and still expect others to feel for you or respect you. Loyalty is just as important to me as respect is, if not more. One of my strengths in my life is loyalty. I hold that very close to me and my heart. When I love somebody, no matter if it’s family, boyfriend, friends, they have my loyalty one thousand percent. It is what builds trust within a relationship, what builds closeness to one another. I believe that I am happy, but not as happy as I could be. I think happiness and peace would come once growth and success is making its way through my life. Growth has recently entered my life. I feel it, I love it, and I would love for it to continue because with that success follows. 5 HOW LIFE FEELS NOW After watching “Psychology and the Good Life” by Laurie Santos, I honestly don’t believe that this class is just for individuals that have the money to go to Yale. I think that a student like me who attends a community college would’ve loved a class like this. I have a very open mind and have recently found my love for writing again, so when Laurie says, “It’s bad when our mind lies to us about what we want to be happy . . . There are all of these cases where we forecast stuff’s going to make us happy and it doesn’t make us as happy as we assume. What’s one of these forecasts that tends to be really off? What are one of these many cases where our mind is lying to us about what makes us happy? A very common one is data on salary. We think that that's the thing we should work for, many of us work really hard, many 6 of us pick our jobs based on the salary we’re going to get. Why? Well, we have some assumptions that we need more money to be happier. We need a bigger house to be happier, we need all this stuff to be happy. But the research just doesn’t bear that out, in fact the research shows us how weird our forecasts are. That our minds are kind of lying to us all the time” (Santos 21:38-22:28). I strongly agree and relate because I recently joined college. This is my first semester. In high school, I always had in mind that I would be doing something in the medical field, I still had this mindset up until recently. Throughout elementary and middle school, one of my favorite things to do was write. My favorite class was always English. I loved writing, yeah, I may have disliked reading, but I LOVED writing. But once I entered seventh grade all of my passion went out the window. I stopped writing. I honestly didn’t even try to continue. When I graduated high school, I still had no care in the world for writing. Now that I am in community college, my love for writing has come alive once again and I would love to pursue a career in this, but when searching up the type of careers they have in writing, and how much the salary is I kind of got discouraged because just like Laurie said, “We have some assumptions that we need more money to be happier.” That’s exactly how I feel. Not only do I feel like I need money to be happier, but it’s also more so of a need at this point, especially with the world we live in today. I have decided to read up on some things that I wanted to learn more about on living a meaningful life. What I have chosen is “How Writing Makes You Happier” by Gregory Ciotti on Psychology Today, and “How Exercise Can Give You a Sense of Purpose” by Craig Cox on Experience Life. I specifically chose them because I never really thought these two things would ever make your life more meaningful or enjoyable. Of course, I know that writing helps some people feel their feelings and emotions by putting it on a piece of paper, but I didn’t think it had a huge impact on your life. It’s kind of the same thing as choosing if exercise makes your life more meaningful, because if anything I thought exercise wears you down and makes you groggy. Because this is the way that I was thinking about these two specific things, I decided to do some research on if this really works and how it may really help and affect your life and you as an individual. What really grabs me in is how little I do both things and how I see it affecting my life. It makes me 7 think that maybe if it does make life more meaningful why not do it? My mind is in shambles the majority of the time especially with my mental health issues, so a big part of me really does hope that both writing and exercising does make life more fulfilling. Gregory Ciotti mentions three very important things that we all should keep in mind and that speak to me the most. He mentions, “writing makes you happier, writing can lead to better thinking and communicating.” He then asks “if writing is an outlet for handling hard times?” While talking about how writing makes you happier, he says, “Expressive writing has also been linked to improved mood, well-being, and reduced stress levels for those who engage in it regularly.” He then follows it up with evidence by Adam Grant, which Adam then says, “Research by Laura King shows that writing about achieving future goals and dreams can make people happier and healthier. Similarly, there’s plenty of evidence that keeping a gratitude journal can increase happiness and health by making the good things in life more salient.” Gregory then mentions that writing can lead to better thinking and communicating. He says that if you’re lazy with your words it creates difficulty in describing feelings, etc. “Laziness with words creates difficulty describing feelings, sharing experiences, and communicating with others.” He then goes on to talk about if writing helps or if it’s an outlet for handling hard times? I personally would say yes it does help, and that it can also be an outlet for handling rough times. But he says that he has seen a study or two that stoic people tend to not receive many benefits when writing about their rough times, but that on the other hand there have been some amazing studies that has shown that writing about trauma is a powerful way to come to terms with what you’ve been through. Something that made me interested in reading the Craig Cox article was the first two lines where he said, “Seeking more purpose in your life? Regular physical activity could be instrumental. Want to exercise more regularly? Engaging in a purposeful life may be key.” Because I for sure am seeking more purpose in my life, and I am also trying to exercise more regularly! In this article he explains how exercise promotes purpose, and how purpose motivates exercise. He goes onto say that “Plenty of studies have shown how exercise boosts mood and how people with an upbeat attitude tend to work out more often than their less-positive counterparts.” Once Ayse Yemiscigil, 8 PhD, a postdoctoral researcher heard of this, she then wondered if purpose and exercise can combine to create a similar effect. Her and her colleague Ivo Vlaev PhD, a behavioral scientist, then took it upon themselves to test her hypothesis. They “analyzed data on 14,159 participants in the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing longitudinal report on the lives and attitude of Americans 50 years old and older.” Craig mentions that “The respondents were questioned about their sense of purpose and activity levels at the beginning of the survey and again four years later…they found that the benefits of exercise and purpose worked reciprocally. Participants who were physically active at the beginning of the study reported developing a more meaningful life as the years went on, and those who said they were living meaningful lives gradually became more physically active.” Reading “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy” by Emily Smith has completely opened my eyes and mind to a whole new different perspective on life period. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece of writing. Emily mentions, “Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy, without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful.” This quote resonates with me because I live every day of my life like this. There are days where I cry, and give myself a super hard time because I just feel like what am I doing? Why am I so lost? What’s the point of any of this? What direction am I even going in life? I honestly live my daily life with the hopes that one day, it’ll be purposeful. Like of course my life is purposeful in the sense of me having people to live for, people to care for, people that love and care for me, but I just don’t feel like it is purposeful in terms of me being happy and enjoying myself. I often struggle with living life freely. When I go anywhere whether it’s a new job, someone’s house, an activity, outside, anything really, I constantly restrict myself from doing what I really want to do. That is honestly something I truly despise about myself. It’s like I can’t go anywhere without feeling like something is going to happen. I just always feel so out of touch 9 with reality. Over the years, it seems like no matter how hard I try to change that mindset I always fall right back into it which I believe and know makes me a weak person. Choosing to be able to live life freely and without any restrictions as one of my personal philosophies helps me because not only is this truly something I would love to work on, but this is also something that I NEED to work on. Although everybody isn’t perfect nor needs to be perfect, I think we as people should all strive to be better than we last were. Over the years, I honestly haven’t tried to better myself, not even in the slightest bit. Although I was very aware of this it just didn’t matter to me. It just didn’t mean anything to me or my life. I kind of was just letting my life slip away, and myself. I’m not sure if it was a mix of my mental disorder and depression but I was in that stuck mindset for about 5 years. I am now 24 years old and am just now feeling and realizing that life is actually worth it, that it’s worth living and the only way to live is to really live. You can’t stay stuck and expect things around you to change, or better yet yourself to change. This is what people constantly told me, every single year and no matter what or how they said it, it didn’t matter but now it does. As you can imagine I struggled with believing in myself because of how much time I took off, how much time I spent doing nothing, wasting my life. This is where school making life worth living again comes in. Never did I think I could get A’s, or anything above a 70 but now that I’m in school that’s all I’m getting. In every single one of my classes I have a 90 or above and it just makes me feel so good and so happy. It gives me a reason to keep going and working hard. We do change when we’re ready. That’s why I believe it’s very important to never try to change somebody, especially when you love them. If you love somebody the same way you found them, you let them be and if there’s something’s you may not like you can always choose to leave or stay because one day they will change. It’s just up to you whether you want to stay and wait for that change or leave and stand by your boundaries and standards, but one thing you should never do is try and change somebody. You only have control over one thing in your life, and that is you. 10 YOUNGER ME WOULD BE PROUD OF TODAY’S ME ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Works Cited Ciotti, Gregory. “How Writing Makes You Happier.” Psychology Today, 4 Aug. 2014. How Writing Makes You Happier, Smarter, and More Persuasive | Psychology Today Cox, Craig. “How Exercise Can Give You a Sense of Purpose.” Experience Life by Lifetime, 16 Nov. 2021. How Exercise Can Give You a Sense of Purpose — and Vice-Versa 11 Santos, Laurie. “Psychology and the Good Life.” The Aspen Institute, You Tube, 29 June 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZizdB0TgAVM Smith, Emily Esfhani. “There's More to Life Than Being Happy.” English 93 Handout. Atlantic, 9 Jan. 2013.