Catching Up on My First Semester

I am starting this blog in the middle of my second semester of college so there is some stuff I’m going to need to catch you up on. There isn’t a whole lot so it’ll be brief.  I’ll start from the very beginning of the semester, from the very first thing I remember (my memory is pretty bad sooo…).

The Very First Day

My very first day of college was honestly nothing too crazy. I don’t really remember feeling nervous or anything. It kinda just felt like a continuation from the last school year. The only difference was that I wasn’t really used to walking around school alone. I felt somewhat awkward doing this especially since I didn’t really know anybody. It was a change from going to a high school of just about 200 students where basically everyone knew each other. I got used to it within a week though.

Other than that, I walked into my first day only being enrolled in only six units. Keep in mind that means I was only a part-time student. I needed to be in 12 units to be full-time and also to receive financial aid. I crashed three out of the five classes I took that semester. Luckily I wasn’t denied from any of them and my financial aid wasn't revoked. I also made a really important decision that day to not crash a computer science class, but to crash a counseling class instead. Doing this ended up giving me the benefit of being able to join the First Year Experience The First Year Experience is a service offered to first year students to help them adjust to college life. This is the department that ended up offering me a job which I accepted.

Academics

As for academics, there isn’t a whole lot that you need to know. Classes were all a breeze. I was in Calculus, Intro to Engineering, Counseling, Elementary Chemistry, and Chemistry Lab. I had already taken Chemistry and Calculus in high school so those 3 classes were just review for me. I was only taking Calculus again because I got a 2 on the AP exam. That means the class was still a fair challenge for me, but I managed to pass it with an A. After my first semester, I had a GPA of 4.0. This was something I wanted to maintain for the remainder of college.

Challenges

As I said in the previous section, Calculus was still a challenge for me despite taking it the previous year in high school. This was due to some other problems that I had with my own behavior. Firstly, my self esteem has always fluctuated between being very high and being very low. Sometimes I feel like I am the smartest person in the world and sometimes I feel like I’m not cut out for college, or engineering at least. This is bad for when you’re a student because either extreme can be detrimental to your education. Feel too confident in yourself and you’ll end up not putting in the necessary effort to succeed. Don’t feel confident enough and you won’t believe you can succeed. And you’ll be right. A student needs to have a balance of these to be successful. Secondly, I wasn’t making the sacrifices I needed to in order to do my best. When I wasn’t working, I spent more time going out with friends than I did studying. I knew this behavior wasn't good for me but I continued on with it. I ended up narrowly avoiding a B in my Calculus class and honestly I probably deserved one. A student cannot reach their goal without sacrifice and that is something that I am continuing to work on.