One Freshman’s perspective on College

A week before move-in day, I started to have heart palpitations. I am an only child with grandparents and mother who spoil me rotten. The thought of being confined to a small space with 2 other dudes was starting to make me claustrophobic. Also, I don’t mind telling you that academics was never my thing. I hate it. I hate everything about it, reading, homework, quizzes, and papers. The idea of continuing this sort of torture for the next four years was just nauseating. However, my proposal to stay home and play videogames for the rest of my life did not sit well with my mom.

I arrived at my dorm and to my dismay, the room is truly a cell. A forced triple. Really? I again express my disdain for college to my mom who has now become deaf to my complaints. She promptly leaves me after my room is set up. I can’t believe she would abandon her only son like this.

My roomates show up. They seem normal and not at all like what I thought. I can’t tell you what I thought since they may read this. But I will say, it was not pleasant. My dorm mates also seem decent enough. They actually turned out to be pretty cool to hang out with. The first couple of days were fun. Classes have not started so we could just have fun. If this is college, then I think I can handle it.

Then classes started. Gross. Reading, assignments, writing and more reading. Why can’t I just hang out with my new friends? I know I am really good at that, socializing. Who needs education? Fine, I know I need it. It is for my future. But why does it have to be so tedious. If I had it my way, I would play all day and focus as little as possible on studying.

In English, I read that college is a discourse. Through a couple of authors, Gee and Nathan said that in order to master this thing, I need to be open minded, adapt, learn to shed old habits, especially bad ones, and strike a balance between enjoying myself and studying. Well, I got enjoying myself down packed. I love being in college. I have a new found freedom to do whatever I want. I don’t have someone nagging me all the time about doing my homework or studying for a test. So, finding a balance was not easy.

I got a lot of unsolicited advice before school. I kept getting the old cliche, “work hard and play hard”. Like I said, I got the play hard down but now need to learn to balance that with working hard. The first semester flew by. I am starting to get a hang of it with at least keeping up with my reading and assignments. I will be honest and say that I have not mastered it yet. It is not something I enjoy. However, I am realizing that I need to find a balance, otherwise, my studies will suffer. I do know that I need to do well in order to successfully master college which is ultimately going to be the foundation for my future. So, I will need to be little bit more better at this balance thing. Maybe it will come with time and more experience at being in college. After all, I am only a freshman and need to focus on finishing my first semester first.