Author: cheetah 23!

Since graduating from high school, I’ve had to get used to the fact that I had more responsibilities than I had a few months before graduation. I began working full-time and found ways to save the money I made to avoid taking out loans. Eventually, I had to make decisions for myself, and my parents couldn’t influence those decisions. Surely my parents can help make the decision, but I need to figure out what I truly want to do and how I want to spend my time. I had to find a way to be more responsible with money, bills, school, and balancing my social life. All the change that happened has helped me become more of my true self and more self-reliant. All that being said, I’m also able to manage my own schedule effectively, which certainly helps my time management when it comes to balancing my responsibilities.

A few weeks into the semester went smoothly until I found a career that interested me, but that required me to change my major. The downside is that UWGB doesn’t provide criminal justice as a major and only has limited classes. Recently, I made a tough decision to transfer to a new school next semester that offers a criminal justice program, so I can be successful later on in life. I’m excited to start something that I have a strong interest in. I’ve had to make many decisions that will affect my life and will challenge me, but I’m looking forward to new beginnings. I enjoy being able to control what my schedule looks like and being able to find ways of organization that fit right for me. With these new changes, I’m able to test out what doesn’t work and what does, which will help me out in the long run. Being my own boss feels great and gives me my own freedom to try out what I want.

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At the beginning of the semester, I was doing great. I was getting ahead in classes, so I wouldn’t have anything to do over the weekends since that’s when I usually work. Currently, I’m still getting ahead in my classes, but I’ve been stressed out with work and school altogether. I can handle it, but it’s starting to get overwhelming. My professors in each of my classes assign plenty of work to be done each day, which includes quizzes, exams, discussions, or papers that take up a long period of time. On top of school, I work two different jobs that keep me busy throughout the week. At my campus job I typically work close to thirty hours a week and every weekend at my job in my hometown I work sixteen hours. With these long hours at work and school, I barely have time to focus on myself by doing the things I love.

I have also been having struggles with my roommate, so that’s also been adding to the stress. It’s been a little over a month since move-in day and she hasn’t done anything with cleaning or keeping her side organized. Not only am I working so much and putting all my focus into my schoolwork, but I’m also taking time to clean up after my roommate. I’m also not the confrontational type of person, so this is making me more stressed out which isn’t helping me in any type of way. I’ve also been stressed lately because I changed what profession I want to go into and so I’m unsure of how my schooling should be in the future. I know to get where I want I for sure need my bachelor’s degree, but I’ve been debating whether I go online or continue going to class in person. Since I do not have a liking to living on campus, I will most likely move back home and continue with class virtually.

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I expected college to be hard and stressful. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when it is stressful and there will be those days in the future, but so far, it’s been easy. My classes are generally easy, and I expected professors to be stricter with exams. However, all my professors allow open notes/books for quizzes and exams. This surprised me because in high school I was always told college is stricter and has set guidelines. I know that all professors aren’t the same and some will have their quirks, but it still surprised me that my professors for this semester assign tests the same way. For example, exams are online and can be taken anywhere, along with having non-strict rules for the exam. In general, I expected college academics to be slightly harder. I always had that expectation after watching movies or hearing my friends’ stories since they’re older, they gave me tips on what to do once I get to college. Everyone is their own person, so what I was told proves that not everyone adapts the same to new changes.

I also expected to be more swamped with homework, essays, and exams. However, at most, I have one exam each month, at most two quizzes each week, and two discussion questions that need to be answered by the end of the week. I feel that high school teachers try to scare their students into thinking college is a big scary thing when it isn’t. In high school, I was told I wouldn’t be able to have much free time and wouldn’t have the time to slack. As of right now, I have a decent chunk of time in between classes, but I do use that time to get work done for classes. Students must find what works best for them and be their own person. Going into college wasn’t all that difficult, since I figured there would be a few challenges and found what worked for me.

Source: https://rb.gy/6a46e