As I mentioned in my previous post, I will be doing a retrospective on every year of college, as I move closer to graduation. (Only three days left!!!). I was hoping to do this on a weekly basis, but got way too busy during the end of the term! But, at least I am working on it now. Today I will discuss the 2012-2013 school year. Before I get into some of the greater details of my first year of college, I want to give some important, but selective details about myself as it relates to school. It is long-winded, but I also feel like it provides really vital context. Also, as the general disclaimer, these posts are extremely biased. They are from my perspective which only tells a part of the story, but I still thought that it would be a good thing to chronicle. Now that I have finished everything, I am having a tough time wrapping my head around these last few months, so hopefully when I get to that post, writing about it will help.
When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, five years ago, I really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and what I was hoping to get out of furthering my education. Fortunately, one thing that I did ultimately conclude, was that a four-year University was not the right fit for a then seventeen year old me. Not only was it too expensive, but considering how lost, depressed, naive and angry I was at the time, if I had gone to a four-year school initially, I would have crashed and burned more than I can even fathom. So, about a month before I finished school, I made one of the hardest, but most important decisions of my life. I decided to go to my local community college, so that I could take the necessary time to mature, and learn, before making any larger steps towards adulthood. That last part is probably the most important point that I want to focus on. At seventeen/eighteen I was not ready to be an adult. This was due impart to feeling emotionally and academically stunted by the American K-12th education system, and my poor mental health.
Throughout all of my K-12th education, I was conditioned to believe that if you didn't learn in a very specific and traditional way, that meant that you were not as smart as students who did, and that you wouldn't be as successful. Other students made me feel this way, and so did some teacher's, but it was mostly the way the system was designed that caused me to internalize and perpetuate these notions. I have strong thoughts about the need for education reform in the United States, that could fill hundreds of pages, so I won't elaborate beyond saying that standardization of education is wrong! It does not determine a students knowledge or worth, but they want you to think that it does. Students who know how to test well, are rewarded with validation of their "superior intellect" while those who don't, are marginalized, and more importantly overlooked. It bears repeating again: students who don't learn in specific and traditional ways, are overlooked by our education system. Additionally, students from low-income homes are given fewer opportunities, and the system is not designed to help disadvantaged students either! I was one of those students. It took me until college to undo years of internalized inferiority, and it is still something that I struggle with sometimes. I feel the need to bring all of this up, because it provides important context for some of the realizations that I made during that first year of college.
In the last five years, I have learned that I indeed learn at a much slower pace than most people. This has its challenges, because it takes me a lot longer to complete assignments, and to process information, Additionally, the anxiety that I have had since childhood does not help in high pressure situations, so I try not to put myself in situations where that might impede my ability to do well. Once I made this realization, it became very clear why I did not do "well" in high school. everything in high school requires "speed and accuracy" which is something I cannot do. I am either one or the other, but if I want accuracy, I cannot speed my way through assignments, and expect positive results. Additionally, I have discovered that I am an auditory learner, and that taking notes off of slides does nothing for me. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of professor's that teach to visual learners, but I have been able to find ways around that. These realizations did not happen right away, but I thought it was important to include in this post, because it has relevance to the progress I made during that first year. All further digressions aside, I will now do a detailed breakdown of the important things I discovered during my first year of college.
The 2012-2013 school year is when I experienced the most rapid changes to my personality and experienced the most visible growth. The progress since then has been much slower, but it has still happened, which will become more evident in my remaining posts. During that first year, I decided that college was the ideal time to try to figure out what I wanted out of life. Up until then, I had made a series of bad decisions because I was unhappy, lost, and stuck. I felt very limited in terms of choices I could make for myself, and it was increasingly difficult to go to school, and interact with other people, who especially seemed like they knew what they wanted. I very soon realized that they didn't. The pressure that society places on teenagers to "figure it out" is a damaging notion. Teenagers who have raging hormones, and only-partially fused pre-frontal cortex's, (leading to extreme irrationality for some people) are expected to make decisions about college, jobs, and life when they are seventeen years old. While it is true that some emotionally mature teenagers will be able to navigate this well, most cannot. I was one of those people. This has partly to do with my mental health. When I was seventeen, I physically could not make these decisions about my future, and I was made to feel bad about that. It was debilitating to watch other people get excited about college and the future when I was thinking about the fact that I still felt like a kid. But really, I was still a kid. Until recently, I thought that I was like Peter Pan. I did not want to grow up, and make important "adult" decisions, but the reality is that I wasn't well enough to make those decisions, and that I actually did really well given the circumstances. I made the decision to go to college, I made the decision to eventually seek help for my depression, and I have finally reached a point where I can make some of the decisions that most people made five years ago. It has taken me a lot longer, but the outcome is more positive than it would have been at seventeen. However, this too is a conversation for a future post.
During that first year of college, I struggled to let go of the anger that I had been carrying around for most of high school. The reasons for my anger are unimportant now, but it was turning me into a negative and mean person. I won't pretend like all of my anger has magically dissipated since then, but I am usually able to control it a lot more effectively. I realized that my attitude was part of what was making me unhappy, and so I decided to try to change it. During that first year, my personality went through a dramatic overhaul. I decided to cut the people out of my life that were making me unhappy, or who did not truly value me as a friend, (either because I had been a terrible friend, or they had). As a result, I had a lot more time to work on myself, and figure out what my needs were. Unfortunately this led to isolation, (something that continued for most of community college). However, for right or for wrong, having time to myself really helped me grow, think and process. I had more time for homework, and I also had more time to develop my interests, which leads me to my next important digression: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries!
The LBD started during my last two months of high school. As someone who has always loved Pride and Prejudice it seemed like the perfect show for me, and it was. It came at a time when I was so lost and confused, and experiencing a significant life transition. During my first year of college, the LBD changed and saved my life. In conjunction with everything else that was happening, it was there for me every Monday and Thursday, (and every moment in between). I realize now that latching on to a show in order to fill an internal void wasn't the healthiest thing to do, but at the time, the LBD satisfied every need I had. It is what kick-started the literary web series genre, and community, (which I am still an active part of today), and it served as a proxy friendship when I didn't really have many. The show fueled me creatively, and it allowed me to engage with media like I never had before. The LBD, and college allowed me to start becoming a more critical thinker, and for that I am forever grateful.
I still think of the LBD fondly, but I have since acknowledged that I don't need it anymore. I have not re-watched it since 2014, and I don't know if I ever will again, because for me The LBD is an experience that can never be replicated. It exists in the 2012-2013 vacuum, and for me, that is where it is going to stay. This is due impart to feeling like we were growing and changing with Lizzie during the series run, and now both of us have outgrown each other. And that is okay! She was there when I needed her, and that 17/18 year old me is really grateful.
Outside of my rabid obsession with The LBD, I spent my first year of college just trying to figure out what I really wanted. I hadn't declared a major at that point, but I did well academically, which gave me the room to think about it before I ultimately decided on English. I knew that I really loved reading, and that I was getting better at analyzing, so it felt like the right fit at the time. I enjoyed school a lot that first year, because it was the first time I was given the real opportunity to learn new things, and take in new information. I was also part of a college transition program, and throughout the fast-paced, semi-daunting, and stressful first year, my peers and mentors really helped me feel comfortable, and like I was capable of good things. I didn't feel judged for needing to take remedial Math, because I also knew that it was absolutely needed, if I was going to pass a college level Stats class, (which I was able to do later that Summer term). It was the first time I felt comfortable not knowing all the right answers, and felt like asking for help from people who wouldn't judge me.
However, while I was making all of this great initial progress, I still wasn't addressing some pressing issues. I was still anxious, depressed, and I wasn't taking great care of myself. Unfortunately, I chose to ignore many of these problems by distracting myself, and avoiding difficult realities, and my issues magnified as the years went on. However, it is yet again more suitable to talk about that in my future posts, so I will do that then.
*At the end of every post, I will adding a section where I briefly discuss my favorite classes from each semester/quarter.
Fall 2012: History 7A: (Early US History) History has always been an easy subject for me, so this class mostly felt like a refresher, but the professor was so good, that some of it felt new. I enjoyed this class the most out of the four that I took, because I was able to engage the most with the material, and reach new conclusions by the end of the course.
Spring 2013: English 1B: (English Rhetoric and Language) I really enjoyed this class, because the reading material was probably the most interesting of all of my classes throughout college. The professor was effective at teaching challenging content, and the papers were challenging, but helped me learn, and become a better writer.
This concludes my discussion of year one. It was a little all over the place, but hopefully made sense. If nothing else, it was interesting for me to reflect on the things that happened that first year. I will hopefully have the next post done tomorrow.
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