The First Year Of College

The first year of middle school was a year of transition into a new world. I would be going to a new school and enhance my life academically and on a social level. Looking back at that year isn’t so pleasant. My new self today, sucked in numerous amounts of life lessons that contradict the person I was in sixth grade. Sixth grade was all about fitting in for me. I just wanted to be part of a crowd and be known. I didn’t care about my academics at the moment. However, I was lucky enough to be educationally talented and not get to astray in the learning environment. Personally, sixth grade was too overloaded with drama and the drive to be high in the social rankings. If I traveled back to sixth grade, I’d sucker punch myself for getting

Coming to college for me was absolutely terrifying. I am a very independent person so it was not all that difficult to leave behind my family and I knew that I would talk to them all the time. Coming to a state I have never been to before with no one I know nearby was definitely a huge challenge. I am a very social person I love people and enjoy socializing but I have had a group of the same close friends around me since kindergarten so it was really hard to leave them behind. Another challenge for me is learning what switching from a high school institution to a college institution truly is. Even though I’m very independent and honestly did pretty much whatever I wanted my senior year of high school, it is still the most

College changed me. Ok, well maybe not college in the traditional sense but, the high school Ridley College certainly did. When I told my parents that I wanted to apply to Ridley College as supposed to continuing on the route that I was on and going to my local high school something changed for them. For the first time, at least to them, I was branching out and making decisions for myself. Up until that point I had always just sort of quietly done what was expected of me and never really branched out or stepped off of the beaten path into the unknown. Yet, coming out of elementary school I was fed up with being normal. I wanted to be extraordinary and, in order for that to happen I knew that I was going to have to change things up. I

As the mother of seven grown children, I agree with most of Jeffrey Arnett’s, author of Emerging Adulthood, theories. It is a time of change, with a developmental connection between adolescence and adulthood. During this phase of development, children experience periods of self-discovery transformation. There are favorable outcomes as well as adverse effects during this developmental stage. Furthermore, this successive stage encourages and promotes the change from the dependency of their parents to the independence that is distinctive for adults. This autonomy is beneficial because it prepares the emerging adult for their future independently from their parents. Arnett believes there are five characteristics of emerging adulthood that make it distinguishable from other time periods: the age of identity explorations, the age of instability, the self-focused age, the age of feeling in-between, and the age of possibilities.

Freshman year, I imagined that year to be amazing. I wanted it to just have an awesome flow but did it? It did in the beginning then a bomb went off during the middle of the year and turned freshman year into a complete disaster. Freshman year was supposed to be about having a great start to the rest of your high school life before you enter the big bad world but other students just couldn't help themselves but to create that bomb during the middle of my freshman year.

This is my first semester at Mesa College. I am currently a Political Science major. The term that would best describe my current situation would be “non-traditional” student. I graduated from high school in 2006. Since then I have gotten married, travelled the world, and had two children. While in high school I excelled and took part in many academic extra-curricular activities. In the past ten years I have accumulated work and life experience. Most recently I was able to work as a legal assistant for an immigration firm. Being bilingual was beneficial, as was my interest in law in general. I plan on attending law school in the future which made the job appealing. Although I deferred college for this long it has always been my

A few months passed and I was about to begin college. I suddenly thought that everything was comfortable. That I had nothing to be afraid of. Then, I thought

Your freshman year will be exciting, but it can also be intimidating. It is the start of four long years of high school, some of the most important years of your life. There are a lot of important things to do your freshman year, many of which I didn't start until much later. So here is some advice that will help you survive your freshman year, and prepare you for the rest of high school.

As a freshman entering college, I was still skeptical if teaching was the right major for myself or if I wanted to go to college at all. That was four long years ago for me. Since then, I have taken classes I excelled in and I have taken classes I have struggled with and could not find the end of the semester. I am the first person in my family to go to college and not get pregnant or drop out before graduation. I am a member of Kappa Delta Phi: education honors society at Shepherd University and I was also a member of Alpha Phi Omega: the community service fraternity. I have worked extremely hard as a full time manager at two retail stores to put myself through college.

Everyone goes through changes throughout their lives whether it’s a physical change,or maybe a change in their appearance,or a change in perspective. We have all experienced change at some point in our lives.

Coming into college I was pretty calm overall, but once I arrived I started to think more in depth about what all is changing in my life. I had always heard how much harder classes are in college and how some people have to completely give up on their social lives just to keep a consistent GPA. I started to get nervous that once the ball started rolling, I wouldn't have time for any activities or relationships outside of class. I thought that even if I somehow was able to manage enough free time away from school that I wouldn't be able to find friends with the same personality or beliefs as me. The first few days coming in, all I could think about was how isolated and overwhelmed I would become. Even though it's only the second week of class, I have already been able to calm my nerves. I have realized that the classes can be difficult, but I can manage my time to keep my grades up and still have enough time to meet people. Once I realized that I do have and need time outside of classwork to relax, I noticed the wide variety of people I have been able to meet and how even though many of them are different from me that doesn't mean we can't become friends.

The first year of college comes with many changes and challenges. These changes can include the food in the cafeteria, study habits, time management skills, and much more. Every student has to find their own way to handle the first year and determine what works best for them. For many the most essential change is living away from home. Campus life provides opportunities to become a part of a unique, diversified community. With these opportunities come challenges, such as having a roommate, being away from one’s parents, and determining self-limits.

Erikson’s theory of identify versus role confusion, the psychological conflict of adolescence, was evident in my early adolescent years. My parents divorced shortly after I was born and due to a custody agreement, I grew up switching household’s everyday. This meant I had two different school busses, two neighborhoods, two sets of friends, and two very different parents with vastly opposing parenting styles and expectations. My dad was always very authoritative and somewhat forced independence onto me. He worked a well paying but stressful job and wasn’t home often. His absence meant my sisters and

When I first enrolled in this course I thought it would be a good chance for me to meet new people with an interest in ballet, but I never thought that it would have a larger impact on myself. For instance, I did not believe that I would relate the world of ballet to my economics and statistic class that I am currently enrolled in as well, but that is exactly what I began to do. During these past 15 weeks I have learn much about myself, life, and ballet. The class is not what I ever imagined; however I would not change a thing about the class overall. Ballet like everything else has a rich history that although it does not seem important, or appear interesting is key to having an understanding of where it

Hearing so many good things and bad things about college I didn’t know what to expect and look forward to. That change my junior year knowing different college come every year I didn’t really pay it any mind what college I wanted to go to until ODU, Virginia State University and Virginia Teach came. It was Virginia State first year of visiting out school and I knew I wanted to go there I start getting e excited for college that were talking about their experience at college and what to look for when we graduated if we decided to go to college. Eager to start a new chapter college sound like it could be a little nerve wrecking but I thought I could handle it.