At some point in your life, you probably figured out your zodiac sign. You began to identify with a fish, a ram or a bull. You learned that you were stubborn, sentimental or loyal. You flipped to the back page of a copy of People magazine in a dentist’s office to be informed that a “charming stranger” would present you with an “intellectually stimulating project” that would be “in your best interest” to pursue.

I’m sorry. What?

The idea of characterizing one’s entire personality and making life decisions based on an astrological profile, at least in my opinion, is more than a little silly. I personally don’t know anyone who actually pays attention to their zodiac sign or horoscopes in such a way that it has any real impact on their life choices (and by that I mean I’ve never met someone who went out and quit their job just because Horoscope.com told them to). That’s not to say, though, that these things don’t matter to people at all.

The night of Friday, Jan. 14, in what I would call a successful attempt to avoid studying for finals, I logged onto Facebook. Immediately my news feed was flooded with panicked status updates: “I AM NOT AN ARIES i refuse,” wrote one of my friends. “gemini for life, don’t care what you say!” posted another. A little more panicked than I’d like to admit, I googled “zodiac change.”

Indeed, I had been switched from the sign of the bull to that of the ram. No offense to any Aries out there, but I was more than a little disappointed. Did this mean I was no longer loyal? Did I no longer have a place to lay the blame for my occasional stubbornness? Even though I’m usually resigned to believing that the whole zodiac system is a bunch of bull (no pun intended), I felt, to say the least, a little lost.

After a brief panic, I decided I didn’t believe it. So what if Fox News was telling me that my sign had changed? Would it have made any difference to my personality or life choices had they not told me? I, like many of my peers, was very quick to oppose the change. Maybe it’s because I’m a Taurus and I’m stubborn. I don’t know. But it was made clear to me that I felt surprisingly attached to my sign.

As it turns out, this whole “zodiac change” was more of a publicity stunt than an actual astrological revolution. From what I can understand, astrologers have known about the inaccuracy of signs for years, but if you adhere to the Western zodiac (as, apparently, most of us do), your sign has not actually changed.

Relieving? Maybe. Maybe more so than I realized.

I think that, for many, this astrological panic caused a sort of identity crisis. We may know that, on a logical level, our zodiac signs really have nothing to do with the way we live our lives. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve identified yourself with your sign all your life, and that the mere possibility that that might change most likely left you feeling unsettled and confused. And I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s good that we all have something, logical or not, to hold ourselves to. “I’m misunderstood because I’m a Scorpio,” you might say. “I’m inquisitive because I’m a Virgo. I seek stability because I’m a Libra.”

So you can relax, and re-adopt the sign you’ve come to know and love. Who knows why we look to astrology for answers? That’s a bigger question, one that you can mull over on your own if you’d like. Otherwise, embrace your sign, and don’t worry about the big picture. Don’t worry about the reasons or the logic. Maybe it’s just written in the stars.