Everyone tells you that your first year after high school is the year where you will change the most and you will have to adjust to so many new things. However, my personal favorite was “everything changes after high school,”with the all-knowing head nod. Looking back I realize that no one can really prepare you for your first year out of college because everyone has to overcome.
My first semester at OSU was pretty rough. But I think that every student has to go through a rough semester it’s like a rule of initiation into college life. During your first semester you have to be friends with everybody because you have no one at your new school but as you go into second semester and more towards the end of the year you really get to see who is still around and who you actually want to have in your life. I also think that many people go through a phase where they contemplate transferring to a different school or changing their major because they feel they don’t belong or are not worthy or good enough. I was no excuse to this and I looked at many other schools for education majors until I realized how well I was actually doing and my confidence level rose and I realized I deserved to here as much as any other student.
Also during my first semester I was still lost as to what grade level I wanted to teach in the future until I was assigned to volunteer at CPA and I fell in love with working with middle schoolers. This really made me realize the whole “you’ll start to find yourself/understand yourself” aspect of college and how sometimes the opportunities you are given will open your eyes to things you never thought you’d like.
I also feel like being in college and away from the expectations from my hometown and people from my hometown has allowed me to really be who I want to be and start fresh and not do what everyone expects out of me which I find to be really freeing and something I wasn’t expecting when I moved away. However, even though I feel like I have grown and become a much more educated and more rounded person after having a year of college under my belt I still see areas where I would like to improve in my following years. I now better understand my goals for my future and the person I want to be and the things I want to pursue which gives me a better idea of how I want my second year and the rest of my college experience to go.
With all the knowledge that I have now as well as all of the awkwardness from learning from mistakes I feel like I will be successful at being a mentor next semester and really understand how valuable the advice my mentors gave me really was (even if I didn’t use it, leading to the aforementioned mistakes).