With so much to write about in such a short time, Chatterbox has become seemingly the only class that feels too short, compared to all my others, which have me running towards the hot summer sun at the end of the tunnel.

This column has served me as more than just an in-school project: I’ve found that I don’t feel justified unless I exemplify every topic I cover, because who am I to sit behind a computer and tell you what to do while disregarding my own words. 

As a result of this indignant opposition to being a hypocrite, I’ve found myself acting like a better person, according to my own interpretation of what a better person is. I have let more cars out in front of me while I drive. I have written simpler. I have become more comfortable with the uncomfortable. I have appreciated the little things a little more and conformed a little less.

In search of some prolific final topic to wrap up my column, not knowing yet if I plan to keep writing it next year, the only thing I can think of to say is just what I would want to hear if I were reading this, so you better believe we’ll be breaking the fourth wall a few times in this article.

The first thing that I would want to hear in the conclusion of a year long column filled with heavy self-improvement undertones is just to sum it all up. As a reader I would ask, ‘how can I be a better person?’ So go ahead Dominic, sum up the point of your whole column into one answer, knock my socks off.

Then, back again as a writer, I would start by saying that’s a tricky question to answer. It’s tricky because of just how subjective a ‘better person’ even is. While you might argue that a better person is someone who is nicer in all situations, to which I would say no that’s a nicer person. But being nice doesn’t make you pay better attention in school or be more charismatic in social situations and some people define those traits as those of a ‘better person.’ 

So the truth is no one has the same interpretation of what defines a better person because no two people have the exact same opinions and perspectives on everything, and if they did then I would be out of a position in this class.

So instead of answering that question I’ll give you a suggestion for answering it yourself: make your own column.

Now by making your own column I don’t mean you have to go out for some journalism role and work your way to an opinion’s writer. Instead, I would advise you to just imagine that you control your own self-improvement column in your mind and visualize the kind of articles you’d write if you did have a column of your own. Very soon you will find that once you take a moment to plan out and identify your passions to be better, it becomes abundantly easier to exemplify them. 

You don’t need somebody else telling you what to do when you can do it yourself. You have no need to change but if you find that there are things you want to improve in, focus on them and act accordingly. Thanks for reading.