CHENNAI : You learn a lot in college. From your lectures and professors you might learn how to coexist with a roommate who in all probability has an addiction problem and might not be your ‘Most Favourite Person Ever’. You might learn that the career you always thought you wanted isn’t really for you. You might also learn how to do adult things on your own — like laundry, paying bills and how to drink your weight in substandard liquor. College for me also came with some very important beauty lessons that I carry close to my heart even three years after I graduated.
For starters, be kind to your skin. Cleanse your face every night. Or at least, try your extra hardest. Keep a stash of handy face wipes (alcohol-free!) near your bed for those nights when you’re too exhausted or wasted to even consider soap and water. You’ll thank me in the morning and then again a few weeks later when you don’t get a new zit. If your skin is super stressed out, don’t do 101 things at a time to fix it. Don’t over-medicate, over-exfoliate, over-anything, don’t dehydrate your face by trying to dry out the zits. It’ll settle down, I promise.
No amount of hair colour is ever going to convince a boy of anything. If he didn’t want you with
ombre-dyed beach waves, he isn’t going to want you with an all-black bob. The boys are more interested in kissing you and fooling around than the one piece of hair you forgot to straighten out. They’re going to think you’re pretty whether you’re wearing eyeliner or not. Or at least the good ones will.
Embrace and enhance your natural hair texture — you can’t change it and chances are that
someone out there is super jealous of it. The grass is greener where you water it, and trust me when I say that you’ll pay for the excessive heat and styling products that you subject yourself to later on in life.
Feel confident enough in your skin to go without makeup. You’ll always be more critical of yourself than
anyone else, and you’ll also find that it’s liberating to see that your friends will still (usually) treat you the same even when you’re not made up. But most importantly, I learnt that nobody around you notices the little things. (Though they always notice liptick on your teeth — get a handle on that.) There’s so much beauty everywhere, and ever so often; remind yourself of that and appreciate it.