Recently, on January 7, Corona del Mar held its fifth student voices meeting. The meetings consist of two representatives from each class, and they take place in Mrs. Sahi’s room.The purpose of these gatherings are to improve communication between the students and staff at CdM. This week the focus was self love and self confidence.

Students at the meeting described how social media, social expectations, and academic expectations all can have negative effects on someone’s self confidence. If someone sees a person on social media who is having a great day and has a lot of pictures that show they are having a good time it can make that person’s confidence go down. Students tend to compare themselves to what they see on social media, and if they think they are worse, or less than what they see, they will feel that way too. Social expectations can have a destructive effect on kids. Especially because there is a lot of judgement for those who do not meet the social expectations. This creates a troublesome environment at school. Most students’ biggest problem in self confidence has to do with academic expectations. The second a test or quiz is over everyone asks each other “what did you get?”, this leads to competition between students. For some test-takers answering these questions cause insecurity, because they didn’t do well especially when compared to their peers.

Having more self love is also vital for everyone on campus. Nika Aiden a freshman member of student voices, said “Self love is important because it helps you feel good about yourself. If other people try to bring you down, you shouldn’t get too sad because you know your own self worth is the most important thing.” The attendees at the meeting agreed that everybody should love themselves, not compare themselves to others, and support each other, not to be jealous of others, be proud of your capabilities, spread equal praise, compliment each other, and be humble.

More action steps will be discussed in the next meeting. So far, one should have a lot of confidence in the future rise of confidence across campus.