On Friday, August 30, 2024, I tripped over myself in public seven times. Nothing was on the floor. Just me, my feet and a disconnect somewhere along the way. It happened in multiple places across campus. It happened twice in the David V. Wise Center, once in Baldwin Hall, once on each floor of the Henderson Campus Center and once in Brooks. I was on a roll! Having been a grade A walker for about 17 years now, and a cross country and track runner for six of those years, I had hoped that I would have mastered the art of putting one foot in front of the other by now. But sometimes, our destiny chooses us.
I’m not sure if anyone saw any of my follies. There were no interactions immediately following them, but I’m not sure if I would have much to say to a girlie who tripped on the air in front of her multiple times in 20 seconds. I would probably keep my head down to spare her some embarrassment. If that was you last week, thank you.

I really can’t explain why I tripped seven times. The front of my shoe just kept sticking to the ground and my rhythm was disturbed, but I persevered. And that’s growth, people.
This time last year, if I had tripped in public once, I would not have stopped thinking about it for the rest of the week. It would have made me cringe and would have distracted me, and I honestly would have Facetimed my mom about it and worried about who saw it happen. But this year, I just laughed all seven times. Because it’s funny.
I think part of my growth was simply getting more comfortable with my new home, but I think a lot of it was becoming more comfortable with myself. I started to imagine my embarrassing moments as if I were watching them in a movie and I was the protagonist. My character did something funny. I still want my character to succeed, and she will. But my character also just tripped on nothing and that is funny.
Classes are back in session. We’re all back together and experiencing one another basically 24/7. Stakes are high, and the potential for a career-ending, life-altering, embarrassing moment is even higher.
As a new resident advisor in the same first-year building I was in last year, I feel like I am on a stumble down memory lane and the weather is cloudy with a chance of hyper-self awareness and an all-consuming fear of messing up. But being reminded of the feelings I felt by simply walking the same halls and smelling the same smells that I did when I was a first-year has made it clear to me that I now know the secret to survival in this sweaty, heart-rate-increasing, shoe-sticking simulation that we are all in: laughter.
I struggle with anxiety. And sometimes, it gets really bad. Little things become huge and medium things make me want to stay in bed until I am 54. It sucks. Everyone deals with their mental health differently. Doing hard things on purpose, taking deep breaths and calling my mom helps me the most. But anxiety will always be a part of my life.
It was really bad when I was a first-year. Every time I walked into class, I wanted to be totally silent. So naturally, during only the first week of classes, I dropped my cup onto a cement floor. It wasn’t silent. Next, I waved to someone in Brooks that wasn’t waving to me. And then, I mustered up the courage to go sit with two girls and introduce myself during a painting event in the campus center and as soon as I opened my mouth to tell them my name, the devil himself decided to tap dance on my vocal cords, launching me into a category five coughing fit, and causing me to have to excuse myself from the table, hack up a lung in the first floor bathroom and then come back to continue my first attempt at making friends at college. It was a week of character building.
By the end of that week, I was walking up to strangers and asking them for their thoughts on the overturning of Roe v. Wade for my first Campus article. Clearly, exposure therapy has proven to be reasonably effective for me.
Memories of those occasions and countless others — walking the wrong direction and having to turn around, getting questions wrong, getting names wrong, getting room numbers wrong, basically getting anything wrong — tortured me for a while because there is something about being in a new place — especially school — and wanting to succeed so badly that makes it feel like one small misstep will ruin everything. But that’s simply not the truth. Because now I know that even after seven missteps, I’m still smart, I’m still kind, I still have friends, people still love me and I can still be successful. And I think most of that lesson was learned through my choice to laugh at myself, and pretty much everything else.
Harder things will come up than dropping a cup, or not making a ton of friends the first week at school, or tripping on nothing. Save the tears for the hard stuff, and then laugh at that stuff too.
At the end of the day, we can always choose to laugh. The better I got at finding humor, the happier, and honestly, the kinder I became. Humor humanizes us. It levels the playing field and lightens the sky.
No one is above tripping and falling. Literally no one. In my case, there wasn’t much of a choice.
And so, if you see me trip on nothing, have a laugh while your head is down. Or look right at me and we can laugh together. Because it is not that serious. It’s funny.