Even at a college that is as small and well-connected as Harding, I still sometimes feel like just another face in the crowd. I feel like I don\u2019t really stand out. I feel like people meet me and then have no reason to remember me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One excuse I give myself to justify this feeling is because of my name. It seems like almost every other girl at Harding nowadays is named Emma. No offense to the other Emmas out there, of course \u2014 I like the name, and I think it\u2019s very pretty. My name came from my great-grandmother, so I\u2019m glad I inherited it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then on to my last name. Jones is the fourth most common surname in the United States, according to namecensus.com. Put my name together \u2014 Emma Jones! Such a common name that I\u2019ve known of three other Emma Joneses in my life, one of whom is a freshman at Harding this semester. (To freshman Emma Jones, if you\u2019re reading this: Hey! Let\u2019s be friends! Email me, and we can get coffee sometime.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It always seemed to me like having such a common name is a reason that people forget it. But recently I\u2019ve been starting to realize that I have much more of an identity here at Harding than I thought \u2014 and it\u2019s okay that not everyone remembers my name all the time. People have started recognizing me, not for my name, but for other things that I\u2019ve done or experienced with them. People will say things like, \u201cYou work for the paper, don\u2019t you?\u201d or \u201cWere you supposed to go abroad this semester? I remember you from the meetings,\u201d or \u201cI think we lived on the same floor in Cathcart last fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am beginning to see that I am not just someone with a name that people don\u2019t remember, but someone who\u2019s done things and been places and has thoughts and feelings and accomplishments, and people have begun to recognize me for those things. I am my name, but I am also so much more. And that\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I encourage you to not only embrace your own name, but start recognizing the worth that is built around it. You, too, are someone who has done things and been places, and there are people out there who want to learn those things about you and will recognize you for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the great bard William Shakespeare once wrote, \u201cWhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d I say a name is only the beginning, and what\u2019s really important is the identity around it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even at a college that is as small and well-connected as Harding, I still sometimes feel like just another face in the crowd. I feel like I don\u2019t really stand…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15171,"featured_media":15222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15223,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221\/revisions\/15223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}