As I sit at my lunch table every day, a name may get mentioned and half of the table erupts in praise saying “I love her!” and “Oh yeah, he is really nice.” The other half goes on about how the person is rude, annoying, and entirely the worst.

The students who attend North Allegheny are some of the most opinionated, judgmental, and fault-finding you will find. While sometimes this can be a good thing, a lot of times it just makes people conform into someone they aren’t. So, in my opinion we should all forget the judgement and do what makes us happy. We should be who makes us happy.

No matter what you do, there is someone who is always going to have a problem with it. So, based on that reality, you might as well do whatever you please because you cannot make everyone happy. Stop caring about whether what you are doing, saying, or wearing is up to someone else’s standards. I am tired of watching my peers hear something said about them and immediately turn into someone they’re not — someone who is not as happy as they once were.

Now, I am in no way telling you that it is okay to be an awful human being to others because that makes you happy, or to not care that people are judging you if you are doing something morally wrong. But society has created this visual of what everyone should be like and this has caused so many of us to force ourselves to take parts of us that make us happy and rid of them.

I have gotten pretty good at deciphering between the ones in the school who do not care what people think and the ones who only care what others think. It is pretty obvious which ones are happier, which ones are living the way we all should. You can lose yourself so easily when you try to change the things about yourself that others do not like. 

I also want to point out that none of us can snap our fingers and not care about what people are saying about us, because trust me, I have tried — it does not work. What I will suggest is any time you hear a judgement made about you, think hard about whether what they are judging you on makes you happy. Does it? Does it harm anyone? Then don’t you dare change or quit.

Ultimately, we all need to stop judging one another. You don’t like what that girl is wearing? Okay, keep it to yourself — she obviously liked it if she put it on this morning. These small things could make this school a better place and make us all a little bit happier. So try. Strive to be the person that makes you happy and let others be who makes them happy.