“We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.” - Ellen DeGeneres
I picked the quote above firstly, because I am 110% sure that Ellen DeGeneres is my spirit animal, and secondly, because what she is saying could not be truer. The world we live in today is becoming filled with more negativity, hate, and crime each day and it frightens me. I want to live in a world filled with compassion, love, and laughter. So, as a broke college student I thought to myself “What can I do to bring a smile to someone’s face while giving them something to help them look up and realize that they are not alone?” I looked directly at my peers and something grand came to my mind.
Earlier this semester, a suicide happened that absolutely shook me. At the Onyx apartment complex, a college student walked through his living room, passing his roommates’ with a blank stare, and jumped off his balcony. A girl I work with later that night then showed me a picture she got of it and I swear I couldn’t sleep for a few days.
The amount of stress a college student alone has to go through is overlooked by many people, but what is rarely thought of is the stress that students whom are not from here go through. I am from the Tallahassee/Wakulla area so I always have my family and friends to easily call or bombard at their homes but I can’t imagine being at a large campus filled with new faces and even living with strangers. After doing research and even looking at the app “Yik-Yak” many anonymous posts are put online talking about how alone they feel, and even wanting to take their life!
So, during the most stressful week known to college students nationwide, I decided to make a difference! I took my crafting skills to the test! I got small cards, sharpies, and multiple bags of candy and decorated the cards each with an individual saying on them, making sure that each one was unique but ending each one with “You Matter!” and on the back I wrote “Enjoy each day!” This took longer than it looks, trust me! On the back I also taped a piece of candy to each one! I wanted to make sure that each person that got one would be thankful to have gotten one, because you never know by looking at a person how their morning is going. A person could have woken up and had to fight to get out of bed and debated on staying home. A person could have gotten zero sleep stressing about their final they had to take. Who knows what someone is going through? So I took these things I made and passed them out to other students around FSU campus. The enjoyment I saw on all of their faces was all I needed to see to know that I had done a good deed.
