Year 1: Bearkitten
Year one at the #hottestcollegeinamerica, done! It flew by, and yet I still feel like I’ve been in college for years. Weird, huh?
I could use this time to talk about how much I learned in the classroom: how “read this chapter by tomorrow” actually means “read this chapter by tomorrow, take notes, and be prepared to answer questions about said chapter in front of the class with a microphone,” how the hearts of crocodiles differ from other reptilian hearts (although I probably couldn’t tell you how relevant this piece of information is), how many valence electrons a Boron atom has, or how much you have to study to really succeed in a college level class. But I won’t. Sure, I learned a lot--believe me, a lot--academic-wise this year, and I’m very excited about all of the new knowledge. But my personal developments are what made this first year at college so important to me, so I’ve decided to turn my attention elsewhere.
This was a year of change for me. For starters, I learned to appreciate two-ply toilet paper and my mom, who so graciously picked up my messes and did my laundry for 18 years. Dorm life isn’t all that conducive to people who rely on others to be responsible—I learned that one real quick. After 2 weeks of riding the struggle bus, I started to take pride in being responsible for myself. I sucked it up, buckled down, and took my first few quick, proud strides into adulthood… and learned a few lessons along the way.
Lesson number 1: There are people in this world who are different from you. Sometimes these differences are good and sometimes they are bad. Either way, you are going to have to deal with them, so get over it make the best of the situation.
This lesson stemmed in part from my relationship with my roommates: 4 girls, 1 dorm, thousands of emotions. Almost immediately (I’m talking hours into move-in day), we clicked. It was like we were sisters separated at birth or something… nothing like the roommate horror stories shown in movies. You couldn’t have thrown 4 more different girls together. Every one of us talked differently, dressed differently, held different interests, different religious and political agendas, and had a completely different personality from the other 3. By some sort of miracle, we meshed… for the first semester.
As we got more comfortable with each other, tensions rose. For some reason, religion and politics were a big issue in our room. Nights staying up and sharing stories quickly faded and turned into nights of arguing and hurt feelings. After about a month of this vicious cycle, I had had enough.
I sat my roommates down and initiated “the talk:” we were headed down a bad road, and we needed to fix it immediately. The tension in our room had started to take a toll on our personal and academic lives. We let each girl say her peace about what was bothering her, and addressed problems as they were brought up. As it turned out, we were all fighting some battles of our own and we were using our differences as a scapegoat for releasing our anger. Instead of communicating, we let the stress of college life get the better of us and almost ruin our friendship. We never went back to those first months of bliss, but we felt a lot better having solved our arguments and learning to respect each other.
I still keep in contact with my roommates and even plan on living with one of them this coming year. In the end, we didn’t let our differences get the best of us. We made the best of the situation and learned that it’s okay to have conflict sometimes, as long as you address it in a healthy way.
Lesson number 2: Communication is key to any relationship. Tell someone if you have a problem with them as soon as the problem arises, don’t let it sit forever and boil up to something ugly.
I’ll be honest with you; I’m a rock when it comes to feelings. I’m not a very emotional person and I usually get very uncomfortable when I have to tell someone how I feel. You can imagine, then, that my first fight with my first boyfriend was not exactly my cup of tea.
It wasn’t even a real fight—it was me not sharing my feelings when I first felt them, and letting them boil up until I exploded on my very unprepared and slightly terrified boyfriend. I was so ashamed to experience feelings that were anything but pleasant towards him that I suppressed them and told myself I was crazy. You shouldn’t be thinking like this, he’ll think you are a lunatic! Just forget about it. Did you read that? Yeah, that is the worst advice I have ever given myself, ever. This was a person with whom I should have been able to share anything with, and suddenly I wanted to do anything but. I hated the idea of him being upset with me or me hurting his feelings, so I wrote my emotions off as unimportant. In the midst of trying to protect him, I hurt myself.
After blowing up, we went through a tough week. While I was too busy being mad at myself for not being able to communicate, he was busy trying to figure out why I was so upset. We sat in long periods of silence and found it hard to be alone. Fortunately, we both decided to suck it up at the same time and address our issues.
He let me explain why I was upset and then helped my figure out why it had been so difficult for me to share my feelings with him. The conversation ended on a good note, with both of us agreeing to be honest with ourselves and with each other in the future.
You know the saying “the grass is greener on the other side?” It’s totally true. I had to truck through some mud and dirt to get to the grass, but it was worth it. Although the experience was painful, I learned the true value of communication and honesty in my relationship—and this same principle applies to every relationship in my life.
Lesson number 3: Don’t be afraid of the future. You will figure it out and hopefully have fun doing so.
College is a scary place. A bunch of 18 year olds are thrown onto a huge urban campus and urged to make a decision about what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. I still haven’t completely mastered the art of paying my credit card bills, much less choosing a career path. At first, this was overwhelming for me. What am I supposed to do? What am I good at? Is what I’m good at going to make me a happy and successful person in the future? These questions were tattooed to my brain for the entire first semester of my freshman year. That’s a lot to juggle with 17 credit hours and extra curricula's.
In the midst of all of my worrying, I missed out on a lot of great opportunities. I was so focused on my future that I forgot to live in the present. After some personal reflection and talks with my superiors, I learned to calm down. It was the decisions that I made now that would shape who I would be in the future. I have time now to focus on me: get involved with things that I am passionate about, meet new people that will broaden my horizons, get out and see the world and find out where it is that I belong.
So all in all, this was a pretty great year. I finally found my niche, met people who will stay with me for a lifetime, and learned a lot about myself. I’m very excited about the wonderful opportunities that I have been given thus far, and look forward to many more in the future. I’m so grateful to be here at UC, and am certain that I couldn’t have made a better decision to go here. One year down, 3 more to go!
I could use this time to talk about how much I learned in the classroom: how “read this chapter by tomorrow” actually means “read this chapter by tomorrow, take notes, and be prepared to answer questions about said chapter in front of the class with a microphone,” how the hearts of crocodiles differ from other reptilian hearts (although I probably couldn’t tell you how relevant this piece of information is), how many valence electrons a Boron atom has, or how much you have to study to really succeed in a college level class. But I won’t. Sure, I learned a lot--believe me, a lot--academic-wise this year, and I’m very excited about all of the new knowledge. But my personal developments are what made this first year at college so important to me, so I’ve decided to turn my attention elsewhere.
This was a year of change for me. For starters, I learned to appreciate two-ply toilet paper and my mom, who so graciously picked up my messes and did my laundry for 18 years. Dorm life isn’t all that conducive to people who rely on others to be responsible—I learned that one real quick. After 2 weeks of riding the struggle bus, I started to take pride in being responsible for myself. I sucked it up, buckled down, and took my first few quick, proud strides into adulthood… and learned a few lessons along the way.
Lesson number 1: There are people in this world who are different from you. Sometimes these differences are good and sometimes they are bad. Either way, you are going to have to deal with them, so get over it make the best of the situation.
This lesson stemmed in part from my relationship with my roommates: 4 girls, 1 dorm, thousands of emotions. Almost immediately (I’m talking hours into move-in day), we clicked. It was like we were sisters separated at birth or something… nothing like the roommate horror stories shown in movies. You couldn’t have thrown 4 more different girls together. Every one of us talked differently, dressed differently, held different interests, different religious and political agendas, and had a completely different personality from the other 3. By some sort of miracle, we meshed… for the first semester.
As we got more comfortable with each other, tensions rose. For some reason, religion and politics were a big issue in our room. Nights staying up and sharing stories quickly faded and turned into nights of arguing and hurt feelings. After about a month of this vicious cycle, I had had enough.
I sat my roommates down and initiated “the talk:” we were headed down a bad road, and we needed to fix it immediately. The tension in our room had started to take a toll on our personal and academic lives. We let each girl say her peace about what was bothering her, and addressed problems as they were brought up. As it turned out, we were all fighting some battles of our own and we were using our differences as a scapegoat for releasing our anger. Instead of communicating, we let the stress of college life get the better of us and almost ruin our friendship. We never went back to those first months of bliss, but we felt a lot better having solved our arguments and learning to respect each other.
I still keep in contact with my roommates and even plan on living with one of them this coming year. In the end, we didn’t let our differences get the best of us. We made the best of the situation and learned that it’s okay to have conflict sometimes, as long as you address it in a healthy way.
Lesson number 2: Communication is key to any relationship. Tell someone if you have a problem with them as soon as the problem arises, don’t let it sit forever and boil up to something ugly.
I’ll be honest with you; I’m a rock when it comes to feelings. I’m not a very emotional person and I usually get very uncomfortable when I have to tell someone how I feel. You can imagine, then, that my first fight with my first boyfriend was not exactly my cup of tea.
It wasn’t even a real fight—it was me not sharing my feelings when I first felt them, and letting them boil up until I exploded on my very unprepared and slightly terrified boyfriend. I was so ashamed to experience feelings that were anything but pleasant towards him that I suppressed them and told myself I was crazy. You shouldn’t be thinking like this, he’ll think you are a lunatic! Just forget about it. Did you read that? Yeah, that is the worst advice I have ever given myself, ever. This was a person with whom I should have been able to share anything with, and suddenly I wanted to do anything but. I hated the idea of him being upset with me or me hurting his feelings, so I wrote my emotions off as unimportant. In the midst of trying to protect him, I hurt myself.
After blowing up, we went through a tough week. While I was too busy being mad at myself for not being able to communicate, he was busy trying to figure out why I was so upset. We sat in long periods of silence and found it hard to be alone. Fortunately, we both decided to suck it up at the same time and address our issues.
He let me explain why I was upset and then helped my figure out why it had been so difficult for me to share my feelings with him. The conversation ended on a good note, with both of us agreeing to be honest with ourselves and with each other in the future.
You know the saying “the grass is greener on the other side?” It’s totally true. I had to truck through some mud and dirt to get to the grass, but it was worth it. Although the experience was painful, I learned the true value of communication and honesty in my relationship—and this same principle applies to every relationship in my life.
Lesson number 3: Don’t be afraid of the future. You will figure it out and hopefully have fun doing so.
College is a scary place. A bunch of 18 year olds are thrown onto a huge urban campus and urged to make a decision about what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. I still haven’t completely mastered the art of paying my credit card bills, much less choosing a career path. At first, this was overwhelming for me. What am I supposed to do? What am I good at? Is what I’m good at going to make me a happy and successful person in the future? These questions were tattooed to my brain for the entire first semester of my freshman year. That’s a lot to juggle with 17 credit hours and extra curricula's.
In the midst of all of my worrying, I missed out on a lot of great opportunities. I was so focused on my future that I forgot to live in the present. After some personal reflection and talks with my superiors, I learned to calm down. It was the decisions that I made now that would shape who I would be in the future. I have time now to focus on me: get involved with things that I am passionate about, meet new people that will broaden my horizons, get out and see the world and find out where it is that I belong.
So all in all, this was a pretty great year. I finally found my niche, met people who will stay with me for a lifetime, and learned a lot about myself. I’m very excited about the wonderful opportunities that I have been given thus far, and look forward to many more in the future. I’m so grateful to be here at UC, and am certain that I couldn’t have made a better decision to go here. One year down, 3 more to go!