With finals quickly approaching and the semester drawing to a close, it is only appropriate that I take a moment to step back from all the madness and reflect on this past semester. Perhaps one of the most significant things that I have learned this semester is to stay on top of schoolwork. While I have learned numerous lessons about social adjustment, personal responsibility, and surviving on my own, this lesson about staying on top of assignments and school sticks out to me. This lesson is of particular importance to me due to the GPA requirement for my major; I am technically still in the premajor for Computer and Information Science. In addition to the required prerequisite classes for admission into CIS, I also must have a 3.2 GPA. While earning this GPA is very possible, I learned early on that it would require work.
Obviously, I came into college unsure of what to expect academically. I was certain that the academic rigor would be intensified, but beyond that my guess was a shot in the dark so to speak. Within the first couple weeks, I learned that college would take more effort than I was used to. My epiphany came after the first calculus assignments and quizzes. My grade quickly went from an A down to a C. After seeing my grade plummet, I quickly realized that this was “the real deal”. As a result, I changed my approach to the class and have now raised my grade to a strong B. Although it is not the grade I had wanted going into the class, I am still rather satisfied with my performance, and this experience has taught me a valuable lesson that I would rather learn in my first semester than in my second, third, or fourth year.