My first semester of college was probably my most difficult one so far. Since I had been a part of a bridge program 3 weeks prior to school, when the semester started I didn’t necessarily have to look for too many friends on my own, which definitely helped. Unfortunately, I didn’t attend summer orientation so I didn’t have the opportunity to pick out any of my first semester classes. This caused me to wake up at either 7 or 8 o’clock every morning, which seems fine because of how high school is but it definitely proved to be difficult. That combined with the randomness of the type of curriculum, allowed for heavy course loads with very little time to complete my work. It personally took me at least half the semester to get into a healthy rhythm of studying that allowed me to be productive and improve my grades after midterms. The freedom of college is one that I enjoyed and found out that it can also be destructive to your studies. I would go to the gym, hang out, go to parties consistently more than actually taking time out to study. I was able to realize that and layout a plan that allowed me to be successful in the end. Lastly, in terms of campus involvement, I didn’t get involved with too much except for a program called Brothers of Consciousness (BOC). This club is dedicated to improving social justice issues at LMU and the community. This was all that I got involved with and hoped to get involved with more the second semester. So to conclude, I wish I would’ve anticipated the amount of freedom I would have so I could of prepared how to handle it to be the best I could in my studies. For second semester I wanted to do a lot better and branch out of my comfort zone, socially and academically.
