Personal Narrative: My First Year Of College

Since the start of the semster I have learned many different things about myself and how I can become a better student all around. Summer classes can fly by fast and doesn’t feel like a real semester. That it is just to get credit and move on to the next semester. That was not the case for me this summer semester because I needed to think about the rest of my college career. This summer semester is my first one coming back from academic suspension and I took last semester at South Plains College and Tarrant County College. I did really well making a 3.00 GPA overall and am most likely going to make a 3.5 this semester. This will be a huge boost to my overall GPA. The point is am at the point where I am ready to graduate and will try my hardest to get the best grades I can. I really just changed my mindset towards college and the way I prepare for tests and studying.

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

The biggest challenge for me this year was doing my work thoroughly. While on the surface this may seem like something that should be easy, for me it was the first year I was really unable to get away with only giving 75% effort on my work. The assignment that really got me to understand this was an active reading assignment we had early in the school year. When we got into class we were told to define the word “affectation”. While I had read over the article I had not taken the time to define every word and got a 0/5. This assignment was my abyss because of the fact that I missed points that I could have easily received had I spent just another 30 seconds to completely finish my homework. The majority of my challenges occurred after my abyss. A major challenge for me came in my writing. At the beginning of the year I did not realize how important it was to truly stick to the writing process and take time with my writing. In past years I had been able to get away with occasionally drifting off topic during my writing and it took me a while to understand how exactly to approach a paper. Throughout the year I went through a transformation in my writing. After a few writing assignment I began to understand how to approach a paper and my writing has grown since. This year in humanities has left me with a gift. Through Humanities I learned a couple things that I will take away with me and use not just for the rest of highschool but for the rest of my life. One thing I took away was how to approach my work. When facing a large assignment it is important to not be intimidated and procrastinate starting your work. While the first few days of such an assignment can be challenging if you focus and knock out parts of the assignment slowly and concisely the end result of your work will be much better and your last few days doing the assignment will be far less

Going into college, I knew that there will be an abundance of life lessons learned, but I did not ken that I would be able to absorb so much in such a short duration. This past year in college, I gained vital skills and grew stronger mentally. College is a place where everyone learns from their failures and successes, and with that, there are numerous things to learn from that. My experiences in college edified me how to work with others, communicate with professionals efficaciously, and make perdurable relationships. In addition, being away from home and living in an unfamiliar environment without my family availed me to become independent. Surviving on my own, I learned to make my bed, cook, do laundry, clean up after myself, and more. College taught me skills beyond the classroom, and it withal a leeway to becoming independent away

The most challenging part of my first semester at Long Beach State was managing the work load and getting accustomed to the college life. My classes were difficult; I would spend a tremendous amount for time working on homework that I would not have much time to go to club meetings or hang out with my friends. I addressed the problem by going to office hours and getting extra help. In addition, I asked people in my dorm building if they could tutor me. I eventually got accustomed to the work load and balancing school and my social

The most significant challenge that I have faced in high school is my grandmother passing away. She was an amazing woman who helped to raise me as much as she could. As tragic as it may have been her passing actually helped me grow as a person and a student. It helped give me perspective on what my priorities really are.

As each day comes closer to the start of college, the question becomes how will I survive the 4 years of college? How will I avoid being part of those who drop out? How will I pay my gap? How will I pay my college books, fees, etc.

While the years in collage can be both enjoyable and educational they can also be stressful. In fact, there are causes why collage life can be stressful and these are a few I came up with. The first one is students are disorganized, and they don’t organize what their priories are. This is a big problem for me for example, when I choose to go out with my friends instead of doing my school work. Another cause is work load. Many new students don’t realize collage isn’t like high school, where there is less work and teachers aren’t telling you to turn your work in. And finally there is no balance for example when a student spends too much time studying that they end up not having a social life which also causes stress. Overall these are the causes

Freshman year I took a chance outside of my comfort zone, and that risk gave me a future in a career I am extremely passionate about. Since freshman year I have been shadowing my high school athletic trainer. I have learned how to; prevent, asses, treat, tape, and rehab a variety of injuries. However, what has fostered my interest in my major is being able to see an athlete through the entirety of an injury. During my sophomore year I was responsible for treating and rehabbing a key player on the lacrosse team. The bond I built with him was something I could've never imagined possible. I had the responsibility of preparing him physically and mentally to return to play. This meant I had to support him when he felt like he would never play as

So far I have already encountered quite a few. The three main pressures I have encountered are financial, peer, and cultural. One of the biggest challenges facing college students is economic pressure. This means that a lot of students struggle to pay for their education. Recently it has been known that, after graduating, many students enter the “real” world in debt because of student loans.

The most common thing I heard about college before I got here was that college students are always under a tremendous amount of stress and have no free time to do anything other than school work. I was afraid that I would be so overloaded with school work that I would be miserable and lose the motivation to do any of it. In high school I always waited until the last minute to do any of my assignments and that led to me struggling to keep A’s and B’s. This also led to me stressing out over assignments that I had plenty of time to do. It was a simple problem that I could have solved just by using proper time management.

For the first two and a half years of my college career I attended Sterling College. Sterling was a small, private, four year Christian college, where I had the opportunity to run track and cross country. I loved the Ed department there, however, transferring to K-State was the best decision for my family. I got married the week after my freshman year had come to an end, and my new husband got deployed to Kuwait shortly after, and then Iraq. While he was gone I decided to return to SC, and not let my track scholarship go to waste. When he returned last March we made it work with him living in our home here, and my living two hours away. It was very difficult, we had weekend visits, and then I came home. Well, we tried it again this fall and

2. The biggest personal challenge I had to overcome this semester was about family issues. I live with my aunt who works at SAC and cousin who is a student at SAC, and I share one room with my cousin. Unfortunately, I still don’t have a driver license and a car, so I can’t go anywhere alone because our house is far from SAC. Thus, I don’t have any time and space that I can be alone, and this problem has been a big problem to me for a long time. If we talk about our future, my aunt wants me to go to the same way, such as transferring to a university, participating in community services, doing projects with my cousin, and also my cousin gets mad if I wish I choose going to a different way for being alone. This situation makes me so annoying every day. Since worrying won’t solve anything, I changed my thought to new one that each person has each way of thinking and accepted them. That’s a weight off my mind, and I learned that thoughts

What are the challenges college students are facing today? Students are under a lot of pressure

In college life, students face many pressures. One of my biggest stressors was keeping my student scholarship. After coming in to college with a 3.3 grade point average, I knew that keeping a 3.0 in college, for my scholarship, was going to be a challenge that I had not yet experienced. This caused me to work even harder and sometimes even too hard. The scholarship played a large factor in choosing Baldwin Wallace as my school of choice, so retaining my reward is of the utmost importance to both me personally, and my parents financially. As I began classes I realized that the work load seemed a lot larger than high school, and sometimes as if it were never going to end. I soon realized how to balance my time between school work and making grades, as well as meeting new people and having fun. There are many enjoyable things that make college the great experience it has been so far, so finding an equilibrium of hard work and good times has been one the best new attributes I have