I am a nerd.  A colossal, sci-fi-watching, magic-wand-waving, singing and dancing nerd. I’ve gotten to a point in my life that I’m totally OK with admitting this.

It’s not really a big secret. I love to talk about the things that I love with my friends. I own clothing from my favorite shows and books and always manage to slip subtle references to things in my conversations. (I even have a Harry Potter-related tattoo.)

I’m really OK with this. I’ve completely embraced my nerd status. One of my favorite authors, John Green, said this about nerds: “Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’”

This quote really sums up how I feel about life. We should live our lives with enthusiasm and follow our passions to find our places in the world.

It’s hard sometimes in college to remember our enthusiasm for things. We get tired and overworked easily, and we question why we’re putting all of this effort into school when we could be off doing something else. We forget our passions and our motivation when things get tough.

But we keep going, we power through until that last project is turned in or we turn off our calculators at the end of our final exam. And once those weights are lifted, we remember why we’re doing what we’re doing. Why we pulled that all-nighter to get 100 percent on that last test.

We’ve found what we love and when we remember that enthusiasm we have for what we love, we’ll do anything in our means to make it a reality instead of just a possibility.