You are upset, people are calling you names and you don’t know what to do. When your friends ask, you say ‘I’m fine.‘ You know these people are bad for you, they are making you feel bad about yourself. To be your best self, you have to surround yourself with people that will let you. It took a while for Zoey Guo ‘22 to figure this out but she definitely did.
When Guo was in fifth grade she had started getting into gaming. She had first started gaming as a way to pass time at the end of the day, but then she really started to enjoy it so she played more often.

As she started to play more frequently she had noticed more comments about her playing on the server.

“They’ll say, ‘’oh you’re so bad at this game’ or people would also make fun of me because I’m a girl.”

Even though these comments were discouraging she kept playing. The comments were endless she couldn’t get through one game without hearing how terrible she was. As time went on she was hearing more and more of these comments so often that she started to believe them.

“It is weird how people I don’t even know are saying these things about me,” Guo said.

Xiaoyi Zhu ‘22, a long-time friend of Guo’s, noticed her acting differently. “She became quieter and more apologetic. When I asked her what’s wrong or what’s going on in her mind, she used to usually reply with ‘I’m fine,’” Zhu said.

Guo had helped her friend Zhu when she moved to Iowa from China in fourth grade. “Zoey was one of the first friends I made here in Iowa,” Zhu said. “Zoey definitely helped me during my first days in fourth grade, when I could not understand English.”

Guo told her friends about what was going on and Zhu’s first reaction was to try to help her feel better about her situation.

“When she told me her situation, I immediately tried to comfort her. My first instinct was to try to make her laugh or smile by telling some jokes or be humorous so she can forget and move on,” Zhu said.

Though her friend wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the situation, she still tried her best to let her friend know that she was loved and that she is better than what all those people are saying.

“I just tried to get more personal and connect with her so she won’t feel alone,” Zhu said

Guo can now see what mistakes she made in that situation and has grown stronger because of it.

Guo has grown so much from what happened to her and she learned that it is very important to surround yourself with people that love you and let you grow. From now on she will surround herself with people that encourage her to do better and be her best self.