Imagine being fresh out of school, sitting on the beach, the waves swell up onto the sand, leaving that white froth and the occasional seashell. You smell the saltiness of the sea as you sit around on towels and logs talking and laughing with your friends over the sound of the ocean. You find yourself mesmerized by the roaring fire in front of you as you drink your soda and laugh at the joke your best friend just made. Now isn’t that the dream? That’s only one of the things that Mihad Osman ‘22, wants to do while she’s living life on the edge, just saying why not? Afterall, you only live once, or YOLO for short.

Osman believes that the principle of YOLO is very important for many reasons. “It’s an important part of living life,” Osman said. “You can’t live life on repeat. You don’t want it to be boring; you gotta experience stuff. You need to figure out what you like and what you don’t like. You can’t just sit around and wait for your life to pass by you.”

She believes that every moment in life should be lived to the absolute fullest and a moment should never be wasted because you never know which will be your last. Her love of YOLO started by looking at other people’s lives. “I saw that people all around me were dying without doing the things that they wanted or living life to the fullest.”

Mihad’s sister, Ayah believes that Mihad lives her life to the fullest, she said “I’ve always seen Mihad as a person to take all kinds of risks, a person that lives just to have fun and live life in the moment… whenever she gets the chance to try something new or different she takes it.”

Osman also believes that YOLO isn’t all about the risks and spontaneity. It’s about the fact that you only live once, so you should try to make your life worth living, but also do whatever you can to make a positive impact on other people’s lives.

 “Honestly, I hate when people say stuff like ‘oh my god she does this, stay away from her,’” Osman said. “Actions don’t determine who a person is. Like for all you know, that person could be a drug dealer and still have a good heart.”

Osman also knows that while YOLO is a very specific lifestyle and a choice that some people decide to take too seriously like getting tattoos on a dare, but she also knows that every person has their limits and should respect their limits and others. “Some people take this theory too serious, and I look at them and think, ‘you on some stuff’ that’s not ok, you gotta know your limits, you can’t go to crazy with that stuff,” Osman said.