I never thought about what my values were or what I actually prioritized and cared about most in my life. That was until I was sitting in class having to choose ten values from a list that felt like a hundred. I sat there staring at the paper and I couldn’t even find one thing that I valued or cared about cause I never actually thought about it. I looked at Brooklyn and said “I don’t really care about any of this if I'm being honest.” Brooklyn just rolled her eyes and said “I could name about twenty of these off the top of my head that I know for a fact you value.” I just looked at her in disbelief because how could she know more about me than I do? I went back to looking over my paper of values when I heard Jake yell across the room while laughing  “Hey Sammi, I got the perfect one for you…sleep.” I started laughing and said that that was so true and proceeded to circle it. 

After thinking about what Jake and Brooklyn said to me I stopped laughing and realized the clear difference between their statements. Brooklyn knew me so well because I hangout with her everyday of the week so she could name plenty of my values but Jake I only talk to while we're in class and sometimes on the weekend. Now I know Jake was only joking but it made me realize how people who don’t know me that well actually view me. As I sat there looking over the values I couldn’t get what Jake said out of my head. I wasn’t offended by it or anything, it just made me stop and think “wait…” do people really only see me as lazy and that I just don’t care about school and doing anything with my life?

After that I started to really look over the list and choose some of my most important values. I chose 10 values from the list: independence, freedom, trust, close relationships, fun, friendship, honesty, humor, future, and peace. Everyone around me was struggling to narrow it down to just 10 but I was struggling to even pick 10 in general. Then you said “now pick only 5.” I thought to myself that's easy: close relationships, freedom, fun, future, peace. Then you said “now pick 3.” Once again I thought it was easy: close relationships, freedom, future. Then came the time to pick only one of them and I quickly came to the realization that it wasn’t that easy anymore. I had to choose between my friends who've been there for me through all my ups and downs, my freedom, and my future that I have prioritized since the sixth grade. I sat staring at my paper not knowing how I could choose between these. Finally I realized that without my close relationships I have no future and nothing to do with my freedom. Without my friends whats the need for freedom cause I would have nothing to do, without my friends what will my future even look like im only where I am in life because of the people who got me here. 

You probably thought this essay was gonna be about my values and it is but really it was one of my most recent “aha” moments. My “aha” moment was that I realized that I need to start prioritizing things that are important to me. While in the prompt I had to narrow down which value was most important to me, in life they are all important and I need to focus on them all. Such as my future, if I don’t start prioritizing school and my grades I'll never get to do the things I want. If I don’t start prioritizing my friends I won’t have those friends in my future and have nothing to do with the freedom that I’ve so desperately wanted. Now I realize that this is a bit contradictory considering I'm turning this essay in late but I’m still working on it and haven’t fully overcome this realization yet. But really, was it that hard to choose? No, there was a clear choice and that was my close relationships. I'd be nowhere without them.