I’m not afraid to admit that I was terrified to go to college. I’ve spent my entire life with the same people, so the thought of leaving everyone I knew freaked me out. I came into college with the impression that I would meet all of these new people at once and automatically become best friends with them. Spoiler alert – that didn’t happen. My first semester of college was an extremely weird transition. However, now that I’m approaching the final weeks of my first week of college, I realized how much this year helped me grow as an individual.
In high school, I never really tried hard on my academics. I never had the confidence in myself that I could actually achieve good grades in high school, so I ended up never trying. However, once I got to college something in me snapped. I wanted to try. I wanted to get straight A’s. I wanted to make my parents proud. I spent nearly every week day in the library studying for my classes. Every time I got an A on an assignment, I felt proud of myself. I felt like I accomplished something that I could never do in high school. I ended my first semester of college with a 3.8 GPA and made it on the Dean’s List. Now I know that I can achieve anything I want as long as I work extremely hard.
College has also given me so much confidence. I never realized how self-conscious I was in high school until I got to college. I learned to embrace my own beauty this year, and I couldn’t be happier about it. When I got to college, I realized no one really judges each other for their looks like they did in high school. I feel like I became more open to talk to different kinds of people. I’m around so many different types of people in college, and I think it’s really opened my mind more. I think that’s the best part about Virginia Commonwealth University. There’s so much diversity at this school and it really has made an impact on me.
I’m a naturally shy person, so when I first came to college it was really hard for me to connect with people because I’m an awful small talker. I’m still not perfect at talking to strangers, but I’ve definitely been trying my hardest to become more outgoing. College is about getting to know other people, and college has given me the opportunity to try and do that. I’m hoping by the time I’m a senior I’ll be much more outgoing, but I didn’t do so bad for my first year of college.
My first year of college went by so fast. I’ve made friends, and I’ve lost friends. I made my goal of actually getting honors in my classes, I learned to be more open to people and I’m learning how to be more outgoing. Overall, I think my first year of college taught me a lot about myself, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of college brings me. I can feel myself begin to find myself, and I’m so happy about it.