This far in my college experience I have learned a lot about myself as a student. I have learned many new things and I have been really pushed to the extreme as far as stress goes. At this point in my learning process I have developed new ways to deal with stress and figuring out the best ways to manage my time. I think my biggest challenges thus far as a first year college student were figuring out ways to manage my time because I wasn’t used to getting so many projects and homework assignments at once. That was by far the hardest thing for me to adjust to because I get stressed very easily. At first my reaction to this challenge was crying and wanting to go home and just be done with school, but with the strong support of my family and friends, they talked me through it and told me not to stress and worry about one thing at a time and not to ‘over work’ myself. I finally decided that making a list daily of assignments I wanted or needed to get done for that day was the best way to go about tackling this challenge. It did help me a lot to break down all the work I had and figure out what things needed to be done first and which could wait a few days. Also realizing I wasn’t the only one in this boat helped because a lot of other students were feeling the same way I was.
I think my biggest achievement this far in college has to be learning how to live on my own and still maintaining good grades. Being in a new place and living by myself without adult super vision was a very different experience for me. I always had the guidance of my mom when I was in high school to be there and keep an eye on what I was doing and when I was doing it. Moving in at Southern, I had to learn how to make my own decisions. For example, when I would hang out with friends and when I would get homework done, I had to learn how to wake up on my own get myself ready and out on time and just in general how to do stuff on my own. I was really proud at the grades I maintained through that life style change. So I would say that is definitely my biggest achievement so far.
My grades this semester have been very good. They are mostly all A’s and a few B’s. I was kind of surprised at that just because of the difference in difficulty of the work, and the workload. Sometimes I felt like I was just doing my work to get it done instead of actually focusing on the work and understanding fully what I was doing. My hard work paid off though and that shows in my grades so far. I have learned so much in my classes. My English class I feel has made me a much better writer. We wrote three papers throughout the semester and on my first one I got a B- and on my last paper I just recently turned in, I got an A. That was a big improvement for me and I really gained a lot from that class. I think I learned the least in Math because I was in Math 95, and I knew most of the material. But other than that I gained a lot of knowledge from all of my other classes this semester.
A goal I made at the beginning of the semester was to make the dean’s list with my grades, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet. This is kind of disappointing to me because I really wanted to try to do that well, but I’m not disappointed in how I ended up doing. I’m still very proud of myself. I am almost to where I hoped to be this semester and I’m hoping by next semester since I am now experienced I can maybe reach this goal I have for myself. From here on I want to do my best to complete all the courses required to apply to the education program here so that by the fall of my junior year I will be ready to apply and get started on working in my field. I think the only thing I could work on changing is studying more and devoting just a little more time to my schoolwork.
Some goals I want to set for next semester is again, making the dean’s list, but more importantly just working on getting good grades and passing all the necessary courses in a timely manner to get into my program.
I am happy where I am in my academics and life here at Southern and I’m very excited to embark on the next four years of my journey here now that I have a taste of what it’s like!
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