As Valentines Day approached the Growler asked students what “loving yourself” meant.

… how can you love anyone if don’t love yourself? You are the most important, which doesn’t mean you are egotistic.. It is that you love yourself and can love anyone. It is love with errors and your values. Love starts by loving yourself.

… that you would make your decision and your actions based around yourself. So you will be confident and worry about yourself before others. And that you will focus on getting yourself further and more successful in life before you try to help other people.

… that you have to be more important for yourself than important for yourself than anything or anybody else. Also that you have to take care of yourself. That the unique person that has to be first for you is yourself, and nothing else matters more than yourself.

… that you are the most important thing you have. It means that no matter what you need, think first of yourself and then any other person. Loving yourself is caring about your health and solving problems that affect your life. Loving yourself means making choices that are going to be good for your life.

… loving yourself before anyone else, which is something you must do. If you aren’t happy when you’re single or alone, you won’t ever be happy in a relationship. You have to love God and yourself and then you’ll be truly ready. It’s not selfish to love yourself, take care of yourself and to make happiness a priority.

… that you are comfortable in what you are in, it means that you can love others because if you can’t love yourself first how are you going to love others?

… that first you need to love yourself, that you accept yourself with all your flaws.

… to care for yourself before anyone else is in other words is like the saying  “how can you love if you can’t love yourself?”

… to love you as you are.

… to make sure you’re happy before you make someone else happy. It wouldn’t be right to love someone else to the point where they feel more loved than you do for yourself.

… loving yourself right as the first step before you love somebody else. When you love yourself first, your happiness once you do is an important thing for yourself and it will be easier to love others correctly.

… you’re going to take care of yourself, but if you don’t love yourself, you will be more concerned about others’ problems than your own. Why should you be more concerned about others than your own self?

… you are all you have.

… loving yourself before anyone else is important because how do you expect for someone to love you if you don’t love yourself first? If you don’t love you, no one else can do it. If you don’t like the way you are, someone else is not going to love you. You have to love you so someone else can do it.

… it is more important to love yourself first before everyone else because you need to be comfortable with yourself. You need to be more secure of what you do and think. You need to love yourself because if anyone does it, you know that just with your love you will be happier. If anyone else does it you always have yourself to be safer.

… it is important to love yourself before anyone else because if you dot love yourself nobody will and you can’t love somebody else because you have to represent yourself because nobody will. You have to be comfortable in your own skin because you matter.

… if you do not know how to love yourself and you want to love somebody else, you are not going to know how to. Because love is not easy to do and you have to be perfect in as your own self before you go and try to love somebody else.

… it is important to love myself first because it get me motivated. I feel confident and it makes me feel great.

These are anonymous answers collected by beginning journalism students in third and fifth period.

The theme of this year’s Love Issue is just what this question poses and exploring the alternative styles of love: to a fellow colleague, to a friend, to your squad or to a significant other.

But it all begins with loving yourself, first, before anyone else. It doesn’t take an adult that’s experienced life to realize what loving yourself means and why it’s important. A teenager or a child can identify why it’s important, too.

Because when you love yourself, you are comfortable with yourself, you are happy, you don’t have regrets and you are willing to learn.

And in the end, it may result in loving someone else more than yourself and putting others first.

I don’t really have an answer for this question because I don’t care about me. I prefer to be loved than love myself.