Reminiscing on my first semester of college, I’m very thankful for having the right to pursue a higher education. The semester allowed me to not just grow academically but also socially. One of the many experiences that I enjoyed this semester in college is living on campus. Living on campus not only exposed me much more to the campus environment but also to my college community. I’ve made many friendships from freshmen to graduate students through this experience of living on campus. I’ve truly enjoyed it so much.
Every week there’s always new opportunities to meet others and get involved on campus. This semester I became a part of the EOP volunteer program at my school where I helped recruit high school seniors to apply to EOP and also participated in panels to answer questions that students might have with my experience with EOP. I’m also part of a peer mentoring program in my school called FE where I visit a high school senior at a local high school in San Jose every Friday morning to make sure he’s fulfilling all his college duties such as college applications, scholarship applications, etc which I’m also helping him with. I plan to continue these programs for the spring semester and future semesters.
Looking towards the spring semester I’m going to be working at my school’s student store which will allow me to not only gain job experience but also meet more people that maybe don’t live on campus. Academically I plan to take more advantage of the many tutoring services that’s provided at my school especially since I’m going to be taking more challenging courses such as calculus and chemistry. Also, I will take more advantage of the office hours of my professors if problems in my classes were to arise. If I had the opportunity to speak to myself back in August 2011, I would tell myself to really strive for the grades that I’m capable of getting and to not just settle for a B when I can achieve higher than that. Also I would tell myself to get involved with just one program on campus because it’s very time consuming and most of my time should be dedicated to my courses.
– Edgar, San Jose State ’15
