What I’ve Learned After a Year in College

Yesterday I turned in my last final paper of the semester, marking the end of my first year at San Francisco State University. It has been a crazy year to say the least, filled with many up’s and down’s. With these experiences, I have learned so many valuable lessons, and know that I’ve grown so much as a person in just one year.

1. The first lesson that I learned after a year in college is to always be open with people.

I really came out of my shell this semester and had to learn how to confront others. Living with four other girls, drama was bound to happen, so this year I had to learn how to deal with that. After this year, I have learned that the best way to deal with any issue is to face it head on. Every time I would try to ignore a conflict with my roomates, the issue would only worsen until one night there was a full on argument. After that night, I learned to be honest and open with everyone, and hoped everyone would do the same, in order to avoid future conflict. While having these issues with my roomates was definately a downer on my freshman year, it taught me a lot about dealing with different types of people and conflict resolution.

2. Lesson number two would be to STOP PROCRASTINATING!

I feel like everyone says this, yet ends up doing it anyways. One thing that I learned to do this semester was doing my work in small increments each day. No surprise here, but it’s actually a lot less stressful than waiting until the night before. One thing that I learned to do was, in the beginning of each semester, take the sylabus from each of my classes and write down all of the due dates for the whole semester in a planner. Having the due dates with me at all times helped me map out when I could do my work in a certain period of time, instead of leaving it to the last minute.While I don’t always follow this principle,and have pulled a few all-nighters, I’ve definitely gotten better at implementing it into my schoolwork this year.

3.The next lesson learned was that opportunity never knocks, sometimes you just have to go for it. 

This year, I was involved in a community service organization on campus called Circle K. It is a collegiate branch of the service organization, Kiwanis. I didn’t become heavily involved in the organization until spring semester, when I decided to run for Vice President. I kept asking people for advice, as to weather I should run for any position at all, until I realized that the only person that could make that descision for me was myself. The memories that I have made as Vice President so far have definitely added to the overall quality of my college experience, and I never would have experienced this if I didn’t decide to take a risk on election day and run.

4. The final lesson that I have learned after a year in college is not to be afraid to ask others for help.

I dealt with many issues this semester, ranging from needing help in a class to dealing with anxiety and depression. In the beginning I would try to deal with these by myself, which only made things harder on me and worsened my college experience. Later on in my first semester I started reaching out to people. I gained more friends, started going to office hours, and even starting seeing a psychatrist.This semester I was much happier, and it’s because I learned to be okay with receiving help from others.

It’s been a wild year, and I hope that next year will be just as eventful.