A Look Back at Freshman Year

It’s over!!! Summer here I come! I honestly can’t believe that I’m done with my freshman year of college and the fact that I graduated high school an entire year ago. My oh my does time fly! In honor of today being my FIRST FRIDAY OF SUMMER, I thought I’d reflect and look back at my freshman year of college. Today I’ll be taking a look at my spring semester goals and my freshman year goals, seeing if I accomplished any of them, and just kind of reflect on the semester as a whole.

In case you are new here, I’m now a sophomore (wow, that’s feels really weird to say) computer information systems major at the University of South Carolina in the hottest city ever, Columbia, SC. I love it here, and I’m so glad I moved away from home!       If you’re in college, what school do you go to? I apologize for the length of this post, but I tried to fit an entire year of college into one post… that’s kinda difficult

My freshman year goals were as follows:

• make new friends
• get involved
• break out of my comfort zone
• be ok with doing things on my own
• become more patient and not stress over everything

Looking back at those, I think I accomplished all of them! I’ve made such an amazing friend here (aka Lauren, my Target buddy) and I’m so sad to be spending three months away from her! I didn’t get as involved as I had hoped, but I always tend to do that. I like to take a year, especially in a new environment, and just feel things out. Plus, I didn’t want to be overwhelmed with like four different clubs and five different classes!

I definitely broke out of my comfort zone! Towards the end of the year, I just started going to events by myself. I would ask people to come, but they just wanted to sit and watch Netflix all day. That’s not my idea of a good time, so I just started going to things without them! I also became very comfortable with eating on my own and going to the store on my own. The only thing I haven’t really accomplished is not stressing over everything. I am 100% a type A personality so I like to have things clean (like my dorm room and the bathroom) and organized and I have to be on a schedule. If things don’t fit my schedule or might throw my schedule off, I get a little stressed over it. But, that’s just who I am, and I’ve come to accept it which is about the best I can do!

For spring semester, my goals were:

• go on an adventure
• find my place
• make all A’s and B’s
• leave my dorm room

I think I covered all of those in the previous two paragraphs, but I accomplished all of these as well! My “adventure” this semester was going canoeing two weeks ago with the scholars organization I am a part of. It was so much fun, and I can’t wait to spend more time outdoors this summer! I made it a habit to get out of my dorm room this semester. Even if I don’t have class in the mornings, I head out around 8 and go study. I like to think of school as a 9-5 job. This allows me to focus on school and also have some me time almost every day!

All in all, freshman year was a good experience. I learned so much about myself and others and life. I can’t wait to be home for the summer, but I’m sure that in a good two weeks, I’ll be ready to head back to school. Here are some of my favorite posts from my freshman year:

What were your goals this semester? Did you accomplish them?

~abigail gray