Today, I shaved my head. Mediocre Target clippers pulled on my scalp as they struggled to slice through my thick hair. 30 minutes later, with hair seemingly everywhere in my bathroom, I stared at my not-so-cleanly-shaved head in the bathroom mirror and saw a reflection that was me, yet also not me at the same time. 

I began high school as an extremely regulated, robotic, and organized person, the blueprint of a perfect LASA student. I persistently scurried through the tubes in the rat race, continually chasing numbers and metrics. I will leave high school not by reaching the end of the rat race, but by not participating at all. My sense of identity and self had been defined for so long by what others told me or what I would view or interact with online. My careless cosmetological act symbolizes perfectly how I want to move forward in my life: as a person motivated and acting out of their own goals, free from the influence and manipulation of ventriloquists with their own personal motives. LASA taught me the only way to reach this independence is by fierce self-advocacy and finding ways to let the environment I am in amplify my own goals. 

The shaved-head version of myself is the person I have grown into from my freshman year self. My freshman self could never act so spontaneously or without a fully fleshed-out plan. I entered high school letting school define, control, and outline my identity. I will leave high school as my own individual, recognizing that school is simply a supplement to my goals. I am proud of what I have achieved through LASA and cannot wait to continue forth into the world.