Monday Motivation: Sometimes The Only Person You Need To Convince Is You: Why I Chose Scripps College Over Wellesley College

So as y'all know, Yes Queen is all about giving women the clarity, control, and confidence they need to fully stand behind and own their choices. But sometimes that can be really hard when we have friends, family, and societal expectations that we feel the pressure to meet.

I know it's about that time where people are starting to hear back about college/grad school acceptances. So I just wanted to share a little about my journey towards selecting a school, and how even back then without having the 4 Queen Commandments, I still managed to use those principles to make my decision.

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"You turned down Wellesley?!" the woman asked in a wide-eyed state of bewilderment.

"Yeah, I did," I replied as I continued to slice through my dinner. This woman, a family friend who agreed to hear my knife-selling demonstration (a whole other story we'll have to get into later) as probably a courtesy to my grandmother, invited me to stay over for dinner.

"Wow! I can't believe anyone would do that," she kept going. Now I think most people would be bothered, if not outraged that a stranger would belittle, or at least come off as belittling their choice of where to go to school, but I was oddly calm.

Maybe it's because she wasn't the first person, unfortunately, that I had to sit through this conversation with.

So many people kept asking me in the days following me submitting my deposit to Scripps this same question that wasn't really a question; how could I choose what they thought of as no-name Scripps, over the prestige of Wellesley College?

And as much as it would pain them to hear this, it honestly wasn't that hard of a decision. So let me tell y'all something about me. I may not have been confident in my looks, or my flirting skills. But if there was one thing I have always known for sure, and have never lacked confidence in, it is my intelligence.

School and my education were my only escape from feeling the pressure of having to think about why I couldn't master a cat eye. So when everyone kept trying to sell me on the aluma network, and the prestige of the school... I gotta say... none of that personally mattered to me.

Sure, it's always a nice thing to have access to, but in my heart, I never felt like my school was what would be the end-all, be-all of my success. I always believed that if I was destined to be someone great, it would be off of my own hard work and determination, and that the best thing for me to invest in would be the community; would I be in a space where I felt nurtured and motivated to do my best work, and be my best self?

Both schools offered me similar aid packages, and I happen to re-vist both on crappy weather days. Both had outstanding educational resources, and were also women's colleges. To many in this situation, choosing Wellesley would have been a no-brainer. But maybe that's why I was so dismayed from choosing it.

Because when I really took the time to think about it as I was writing my pros and cons list for both schools, I soon realized that one of the biggest reasons I had for wanting to choose Wellesley was because I felt like I had to. Like who in their right mind would choose otherwise?

I soon realized that I wanted to pick Wellesley for so many reasons outside of myself, but when I really looked at the school whose culture and values aligned with who I was as a person, to me, it actually was a complete-brainer... and that choice was Scripps.

Now that I've gone on to do fairly well for myself, I would be pretty surprised to hear someone want to give me shit about choosing Scripps over Wellesley.

But I share this story for anyone who is in the middle of making a big decision... like where you want to go to school, and invest way a crazy amount of money for the next however many years, as a way to hopefully encourage you to take some time to get some much needed clarity on what you really need out of this decision. Don't just go for the path that you think you should want. Choose the path that you fully want to stand behind, and use systems like the 4 Queen Commandments, and your big sistah auntie queen Daysha to help you build your confidence to handle the push back.

And always remember that sometimes the only person who you really need to convince is you.

You got this, Queens!