Scenario II – First Year Ambassador
Dear College Bound Seniors,
I remember being so excited for college for the entirety of my senior year of high school. Anytime anyone would ask me how school was going or anything like that I would always respond “Oh, I’m just trying to get through this year and into college”. I was so looking forward to a fresh start at a new place with new people. I had visions for myself of making best friends and being a high-performing student. I think these goals for myself were so general that I did not consider where I would be living them out. I did not consider how the University of New England and the experience I would be subjected to specific to this school would have its own effect on my ability to live out these visions. Within my short time here, I can definitely say that I have learned some lessons about college.
I made the decision to not bring my car on campus for my freshman year late in the summer and close to the parking pass purchase deadline. It originally was not even a question in my mind that I would bring it- I could keep anything extra that I don’t need in my dorm in it, I could use it to explore the Biddeford area and to get off campus every once in a while or go home, I could use it to give friends rides and go do something fun with them to bond. These things were all so sure in my head and part of my plan until I talked to one of my friends back home about why he chose not to bring a car on campus. Through this conversation in addition to my experience on campus I now know that I made the right decision in not bringing my car.
Usually by this time of year, the money I have saved from my summer job would have nearly run out and I would be needing to ask my parents for money for things like gas and car insurance payments and even Christmas presents. However, because I didn’t bring my car I was able to get a car insurance plan that only covers my car if it catches on fire or gets broken into or something like that which turns out to be a much smaller amount of money than to pay for full coverage. I am also not spending any money on gas and none on fast food which is a purchase that becomes more habitual when I’m frequently driving past a McDonalds. I also saved almost four hundred dollars on not needing to buy a parking pass for the year. A parking pass to simply have to drive around in circles until a parking spot a mile away from your dorm opens up so that you can park or trudge in snow to go move your car to Sokokis and then walk all the way back when it snows. I hear so many grievances from my peers about having a car on campus that I continuously made myself more and more confident in my decision. Most importantly, not having my car on campus has almost forced me to stay on campus and get comfortable here in a way. Due to the fact that I have no means of escaping, I have had to find my own productive ways to fill my time and have consequently had more time to make friends and get to know some of my peers. I think I can credit my staying on campus with the friendships I have progressed on the weekends and my membership in the Tennis Club. Especially as an introvert, I think that not bringing a car has really helped to immerse me into the college experience in this way.
At the start of the semester, and the start of every other semester I’ve encountered in my experiences in school, I have gotten away with my procrastination habits and putting assignments off until the last minute and still producing good work. I always do my best work within the first half of the semester, and then scrape by for the final few months. I followed the same pattern in this first semester of college. I would say that I peaked at the submission of Project 1 of my GUST class. I think it is safe to say that is one of the best course materials I have produced all semester, and was the product of a lot of hard work, focus and time well-managed. I used my resources of the library and spacious desks in there where I could lay out all of my brainstorming scrap papers and textual references I would need, put in my headphones to listen to some mindless piano music, and worked for two hours in three different instances.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/clouds/1490426761?
Shortly after this, was Columbus Day weekend and I went home, vegged out and completely ignored my responsibilities. For the rest of the semester it has been much more of a struggle to get into my groove of studying.
Since we read about Carol Dweck and her ideas about having a growth mindset and forming new strategies, I have begun to notice areas in which my mindset is fixed more often which I talked about in homework number eleven, “I have discovered areas in which I succumb to the fixed mindset, which is pretty much any situation where an understanding of something does not come relatively easy to me. In statistics, I will occasionally get an answer wrong over and over, and I only reluctantly will attempt to improve whatever strategy I am implementing. In this class, when I am getting writer’s block or can’t think of a certain word, I will often just stop and give up or procrastinate” (Apgar). I have already been thinking determinedly about how I plan to try a new strategy for next semester and am hoping that this will change my habits more permanently for the better. I plan to simply do my homework immediately after it is assigned. I know this sounds simple but it is something that I’ve always thought I didn’t need to do, and my other strategy has been failing miserably. This plan prioritizes my school work, it makes it so that I am more motivated to get my work done so that I can go and do whatever I want with my free time, which will then be free time without the weight of my responsibilities being carried around in the back of my mind. I want to be able to go to class, gather my assignments, and with a fresh mind, go to the library and complete the work so that I won’t have to think about it more and it won’t become another point of stress in my life. The only thing that this strategy might not work for is studying for exams for which I will have to mindfully distribute my studying time, but with determination and willpower I can make it work. My advice when it comes to getting this work done is to simply evaluate what strategies have and have not worked for you in the past, and plan accordingly for the future.
As an undeclared major who still is entirely unsure about what I want to do with my life, I had no idea as to what I was looking for in a college when I was applying last November. I didn’t consider what kind of people I wanted to be around and how the campus environment would have an influence on that, I didn’t consider what mattered to me and what I also wanted to matter to the school, I really didn’t think my decision through. Even though I am undeclared, I still could have taken a better look at the quality of the programs that the school offers and made sure to be in one or two of those to try them out. It is difficult for me because my ideas about my future change all the time. At the time that I wrote my essay for Project 1, I was very seriously considering become a lawyer, I was almost confident in making a decision of that consideration, “[…] if I hope to pursue a career in law, it would greatly benefit me to utilize critical thinking skills and an open minded perspective, to become a more knowledgeable and grounded thinker and, eventually, lawyer” (Apgar 6). At the time, I was envisioning myself in a law career and having gone through a political science major, but now I’m not sure if I want that to be my life goal. My difficulty in deciding is my interest in so many different areas and topics of study, it is hard to differentiate between interests that are simply hobbies and those that are my passions that I want to hone in on and pursue. I definitely recommend trying to start differentiating between these things in the senior year of high school so that you don’t feel stuck and worried that you haven’t thought your decisions through. This also brings attention to the importance of utilizing the (typically) five classes of your first semester. I made the mistake of only doing Core classes, and choosing nothing that I was significantly interested in to try out. I could have used my two elective classes to explore classes that focus on two different majors. Really taking the time to think through all of my interests and possible goals, wants and needs for my college experience really could have helped me to feel more sure and better about my decisions.
I would be lying if I said that I am happy with my college experience thus far to be blatantly honest, but I would also be lying if I said that this semester has not been a rewarding experience with how much I have learned about college as well as about myself. I hope to use these lessons to make each semester of my college experience better than the last.
I hope this was helpful. Best of luck! Sincerely, d Madeline Apgar
