Semester Reflections

Semester 1

Life as a university student has many differences than life as a high school student but there are some similarities. Starting with the differences, since I’m living on campus, there is always food I can get from the dining halls at any time, and the gym is great and a short walking distance from my dorm. Another difference is not being able to see my family all the time, but I still make contact with them, giving a call once or twice a week and going home to visit on some weekends. Then there are the similarities, like having time to chill and hang out with friends, or having time to myself, giving me the ability to let the stress leave my mind and body. Another similarity is being part of a club even though the club is different, it has a similar feeling. I connect with my peers pretty well, making friends in short moments. I have also made connections with staff, teachers, and advisors by asking questions and for help in certain subjects. I feel that these feelings and connections might change in the next semester and in my sophomore year, seeing that I won’t have the same classes as some of my friends, and having mostly different teachers. Also I feel that in future semesters I will have less time to myself and have lots of more work to do. In general, the class structure and assessments seem to be very relaxed and easier than high school for most classes, but some will give more work than expected. Some classes will also switch on a dime being easy to understand and do work for one day and then the next day will be something completely different and extremely complicated. In art scholars, I feel that most of the colloquium has been pretty expected but some things were a surprise, some times welcomed surprises, other times unwelcomed but still kept me on my toes. I feel that this course would have had more exploration of different art mediums, not just performance pieces. Activities outside of the classroom would sometimes be fun and interesting, and other times boring or not thoroughly planned out. I felt that these activities would have given a feeling of inspiration or changed the way I viewed things, but they never hit that feeling most of the time, or at least I didn’t go to many activities that would do it for me. However there was one activity that I did enjoy and found some inspiration in and this was the field trip to Cirque du Soleil. It was an extremely interesting and entertaining performance, even though I couldn’t understand what the main message that it was supposed to be about meant, it felt that the message was just a guideline and people could make their own message from it. One of the biggest challenges for me this semester was not getting my work done as early as I could, and I suffered from this throughout the semester, sometimes staying up late to finish homework or projects. But I did face this challenge as best as I could and I always finished my work on time. Next semester I plan to finish my work as soon as I can, allowing me to not have to cram it in one night and giving myself less stress. I will still keep my strategies for finishing my work and learning from it for future projects.