The opportunity to experience a whole new nation is not something that many of us realize to be challenging, yet we see it every day as people enter the U.S.. Many of us underestimate the true challenge of being authentic in a new land, which undermines the issues we face as life becomes difficult to bear. As an immigrant myself coming from Taiwan into the United States, I get to understand that pain in trying to fit in. The staggering difference between the two schooling systems alone was immense, and as an eleven-year-old kid, I had a very tough time trying to come out of my shell. The Asian schooling system bunches us up into different classes, which doesn’t really change as we ascend the levels of education, which doesn’t require us to meet new people often. This small yet profound difference meant the world to me, which prevented me from learning the challenges that come with meeting new people. The impact of such inexperience caused me to suffer a lack of any guidance or friendship leading up to the COVID years. I thought the isolation brought by the lockdown gave me freedom, not realizing I was delirious, like a bird stuck in its cage, I never knew the true freedom that comes with the outside world. This lasted for what felt like ages, and it wasn’t until the first time school reopened that I started to realize my ignorance. I remember feeling resentful about going back to school, not because I hated education, but I hated how I felt isolated from the crowd; that feeling of dread to be in a place full of strangers was eating at my mental health, and I was getting tired of it. I was tired of waiting for a miracle to occur, and I swore to change the way I was. Finally, I tried socializing for the first time in millennia. I remember it being awkward at first, as I didn’t know the slang that everyone used, but I tried my best to push myself to meet new people as many times as possible. By trying, I learned a lot from the interactions I had with others, like how to approach someone without it being weird, or even how to end a conversation without making it sudden, were lessons that I learned within the hallways, and because of this sudden change, everything improved. After this subtle change in my life, I learned that trying new things will be challenging at first, but it was never about success in one step; it was a process that took years, with many failures along the way. Even though I have missed opportunities that I will never experience again because of my cowardice, from this experience, I swore to myself that trying something new and failing is so much more important than waiting for the challenge to wash away, as just trying it out allowed me to be who I am today.