How Have I Grown Personally Over the Last Year?
This past year has been a true eye-opener for me both personally and academically. It is no understatement to say that this past academic year was one of the greatest challenges I have faced as both a student and person in my life thus far. This year, I faced personal challenges including moving for the third time in under a year, adjusting to living on campus, and learning how to manage my time for both academics and my personal life. My academic challenges were adjusting to the workload of college classes, managing a particularly packed schedule, and teaching myself new ways to study and succeed academically. These challenges forced me to confront my fears and persevere through adverse circumstances in unfamiliar ways. This year was one of trial and error and learning through failure. Failure particularly is something that I've learned to come to terms with this year, as this year marked the first time that I failed tests, and faced major struggles in my coursework. But through these failures I've learned new ways to approach challenges and hardship. I've taught myself to study in small bursts with intermittent breaks after failing a test using my old study method. I've learned to make better use of my valuable free time for important activities such as studying.
In the same vein as my academic growth, I have also grown as a person this year. I am constantly learning to manage a better work-life balance as to maintain my academics as well as my physical and mental health, as this is an area that I have struggled with for years. I spent much of this year growing socially, as my courses had strong focus in collaboration and I was living essentially on my own for the first time ever. These changes required me to improve my interpersonal communication skills and increase the frequency with which I "put myself out there" as a means to grow my social network and make new friends among my peers. These changes came alongside learning more about who I am as a person; that is, discovering more of what my values and morals are, what I look for in the values and morals of the people in my social circle, and what kind of person I want to see myself grow into over the coming years. This year has been pivotal for me in establishing a greater sense of self and growing as a person overall.
Looking forward, I will continue to rely on my family, my friends (old and new) and those around me in order to continue my growth both personally and academically. I am very nervous, yet incredibly excited to see what the future has to bring and will approach each day with the lessons that this year has taught me in mind.