Outwit, Outlast, Outplay... SURVIVOR! (of my first year of college)

Well... here I am, blogging... first time since March.

This first year of college certainly was an adventure, but I survived (barely). I may not have had the great weekends of fun that everybody else seemed to have, or met the Prince of my dreams and fallen madly in love, oooor made friends that are forever, I somehow managed homesickness, depression, high stress levels, and lonliness. 

In all honesty I pretty much slid under the radar for my first year of college. I wish I hadn't sometimes, I think that if I hadn't been so... so... boring I might have actually made some great friends that aren't an ocean away (miss you Jess!), found a boy, and had fun with people other than my family.

The other hardship I survived was not being on academic probation! End of first semester I ended up on Academic Warning because my GPA was horrid so I basically had to meet with an academic counselor and talk about how to study better and manage my time better and blah, blah, blah... you know. At the start of second semester I aimed to get at least all B's. When finals came around I studied to the best of my ability, knew I could've done better still, and felt confident.

Less than a week later when I got my final grades I had a D in Quant Bio. I called my mom and BAWLED, to the point she thought one of my rats died. I was so afraid I was going to end up on Academic Probation, lose my job in the Cancer Research Lab, and fail out of school for a semester. I felt like my life was going to be over.

But, in the end, I'm not on Academic Probation, I wish I did things differently, and I have the future to look forward to. 

So basically, for future college students or anybody struggling with anything right now just remember this: work as hard as you can now, and if you know you could probably be working harder than do it! You may have the future to work on things but it's easier to maintain a higher GPA than to raise it end of your sophomore or beginning of your junior year before graduating.

And have fun but stay responsible! If you know you probably shouldn't stay out too late on a weekend, don't. I'm sure many friends you meet will be more impressed with somebody who can say no to partying when they need to say yes to studying and actually excel in school. Don't worry about partying, worry about grades because the parties can come after you graduate top of your college class.