Trying to be Yourself in High School

So yesterday I wrote an essay that has to do with high school teenagers trying to gain confidence to be and express themselves as an individual. Heres my essay that I turned in that explains an uphill battle that I went through in highschool that helped shape my character to what I'll be for the rest of my life.

          Being yourself is celebrating you learning to express yourself and be happy with who you are. For some people, it's learning to love yourself, for others, it's not hiding who you are or changing things about you to fit in. As a teenager in high school its hard to open up to people because you are constantly worrying about what other people think about you.
              In high school you watch people grow and change, as they try to find themselves and stand out of the huge high school crowd. Sometimes these changes aren't good and you watch your friends transform right in front of you as they interact with different groups of people. If you change yourself for one person or group, another person or group may not like you, and you could go around in a vicious cycle trying to please people instead of just being who you are and not caring about other peoples opinion. But sometimes that easier said then done, because all teenagers want is to be accepted, and they hide themselves and become average because they're not strong enough to hear what other people think about them. To be yourself you have to accept yourself and not feel ashamed or insecure about any aspect of yourself, or feel the need to hide certain aspects of you, whether physically or emotionally. Then you have to come to terms with that and learn to convert your so-called flaws into individualistic quirks. You have to be honest with yourself, with out beating yourself up, you have to learn the difference between being critical and being honest and as you mature into a teenager you have to learn to watch the way you say things to yourself and others when being honest.
           Through out my freshmen and sophomore year I was so shy and self conscience about what other people said about me, I was so worried about what does this person think of me "Do they think I'm funny, annoying, immature..." I was so wrapped up in all those worries that I lost myself completely as I became someone I was not. This new person I didn't like she was average, boring, not interesting, not the old me. Now as I look back on that experience I wonder, "how did I let myself get to that point?" and I realized that they won because they conformed me to be just like everyone else. I was just like everyone else, I blended into the background but I still wasn't happy because that wasn't me. Once I realized that it wasn't worth it, I feel like I stand out and can accept myself because I love me.
           My journey through high school was an uphill battle but it was worth it because I gained a thicker skin and learned to love myself. This is problem that every teenager will face and its at this point in their life where they will decide whether they will be average or stand out from everyone while being happy loving who they are.