“Hey mom, why did you recommend this book to me again?” “Do you really want to know?” “Yeah” “Because you really cared about how people treated you, but never stopped to consider how you’d been treating them” I nodded and sat down to write this essay. Of course, I knew that I used to be an insufferable child, but it was getting hard to imagine that that wasn’t an exaggeration. Having just moved from Russia, ten-year-old me was a solitary and shut-in kid. Initially, it was a result of the language barrier and the glares I got as “the foreign girl,” but as I lost my accent and assimilated, I no longer had an excuse. I would sit alone at recess and silently shout, “Look, I’m normal now! Come be my friends!” I sat and waited for the world to come to me. As most children are, I was quite conceited. However, I didn’t have the advantage of growing up alongside other children, our parents forcing us to interact. I had to get out there, introduce myself, express interest in others. Instead, years passed, and I’d furiously type on my iPod about how I’m “probably the least popular person in 7th grade,” and how “that guy who keeps trying to talk to me on the bus is a creep”. I thought that my peers must have conspired against me, and it confused me that people weren’t dying to befriend the recluse that always assumed malintent. I complained, but I never did anything about it. One day, my mom handed me a book called, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. An avid reader, I shrugged and started reading. The book provided many concrete tips on how to make a good first impression and apply psychology to appeal to others, but the lesson that caused a fundamental change in my character was not related to actions, but intent. After 262 pages of more or less obvious advice and many an anecdote, the key thing I extracted can be summed up as “you can’t expect people to want to know you if you don’t make a genuine effort to get to know them”. Lesson One: “Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.” Welp, that’s all I’d been doing. Easy, let’s jot that down. Lesson Two: “Give honest and sincere appreciation.” Oh, boy. This lesson, like many others, had the key requirement of genuine concern for others. Lesson Four: “Become genuinely interested in other people,” Lesson 17: “Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.” This book forced me to do some self-reflection for once and realize that perhaps the reason that I had no friends was me. I realized that what concerned me was my “popularity”, how I stacked up against others, how few Instagram followers I had, rather than my lack of a connection with others. I learned that I couldn’t and didn’t want to manipulate others into liking me, so I had to change. Instead of getting caught up in my own concerns, I turned my focus outwards. Maybe my change of heart wasn’t as instantaneous as it seems in retrospect, and I can’t recount exactly the way my life transformed as I started to apply those lessons, but I can certainly say where it led me. A girl who admits that she hated me when we were younger eventually became my best friend. The friends I made by expressing genuine interest in others became who I still refer to as “my people”. I never became “popular,” but I graduated well-liked and comfortable with myself, which was enough for me. Nowadays every decision I make I think through in the context of how it could affect others. Of course, not everything is perfect. I’m far from perfect, but I’m better now because at least I try. I try to compromise between my own good and the benefit of others, and sometimes even spread myself thin trying to be helpful or “good enough” for others. The hardest step is self-awareness, and I’ve got that down, so now it’s a process of practice, of finding a happy middle between asshole child and wannabe martyr. I can’t say that this book gave me everything that I’ve become since then, but it spurred on self-awareness and self-reflection. Today, I have a deep love for humanity, a desire to not just “win friends and influence people,” but to leave the world better than I found it. Since 7th grade, I’ve done more volunteer hours than I cared to record, and even when none of my peers wanted to join me, went out and made dog toys for shelters, raked leaves and planted flowers, painted a mural for a retirement home, attended human rights and climate change rallies. Instagram saw none of that. As Austin Kleon put it in Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, “Things are already a mess out there. We’ve made enough of a mark on the planet. What we need are fewer vandals and more cleanup crews. We need art that tidies. Art that repairs.” As an artist, that’s exactly what I hope to achieve. Next semester, I’m interning for a non-profit that brings art to the people of New York. In the future, I hope to use my creativity and positive energy to further a humanitarian cause. I want to make up for those bitter years I spent shut up within myself and lead a life fueled by honest care for others, ranging from holding a door for someone to perhaps working for a company like UNESCO. I will always be grateful that I read How to Win Friends and Influence People at a time when I needed it most. Although I don’t always succeed at winning friends or influencing people, I’ve learned to see the world beyond myself and how I fit into it, and that’s something I’ll always carry with me.