Culling through everything I’ve read about the new year, articles usually include two things: resolutions and motivational quotes meant to inspire readers to follow through with said resolutions for at least a month. These articles don’t exactly represent creative and original ways to look at the new year, but you know what they say. “You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”
Usually, my columns concern politics or something else I find not quite right about the times we live in. But don’t worry, or perhaps do, because there will no doubt be problems to write about in the weeks to come. I’m not looking to write this week as if it should’ve started out with “Dear Diary…” I’m also not looking to write just another article about the fresh start 2016 can provide. However, before I can make improvements for this year, I need to reflect. As a freshman, beginning college last August brought about more changes than I could have ever imagined. I’m sure other freshmen would like to pretend some things never happened. I know I did. But before any events are erased from our memories, it would be nice to look back at them once before we move on to better things.
There are two areas where I’ve experienced the biggest changes, one of them being school itself. I remember the days when I was one of the smarter students in my school and when some days could be spent watching movies because the teacher just wasn’t feeling it.
However, I knew beforehand that college classes weren’t going to be as easy as my high school cooking classes. Beyond that, the hardest part proved to be going from being a senior back to being a freshman. Many told me, always comparing the switch to moving between different parts of totem poles, that this was going to be the toughest thing about the transition to college.
I just never thought it was going to be so difficult to basically start over again with a totally unknown assortment of new clubs and activities. Even though I eventually found a few clubs to join, I cannot take back those first few weeks of disillusioned wondering and wandering.
The other half of the transition comes from leaving those we love back home. Since circle time in kindergarten, I had successfully built a circle of friends I thought would last me through the rest of my life. Instead, we just drop our friends and family to start over, pretending it feels natural. No matter how many people offered the advice that everyone misses their family and friends, it couldn’t change the way I felt. For the first two months of college, I just wanted to go back home.
This is the part of the article where I actually get to the point. What made the above difficulties so difficult in the first place was the issue of mentality. Everyone and their mother give advice on what to do in situations others haven’t experienced before.
I wasn’t surprised I was going to be challenged in college; it just would have been a lot easier if there weren’t so many opinions floating in the ether. Opinions lead to expectations, and expectations rarely materialize in reality.
Although the first semester of college is over for many of us, the scary prospect now is that we will have to start over again in another city once we graduate. At least now we have a vague idea of what and what not to do when starting over comes our way again.
My own resolution this year is to gain patience. A lot of my tough times came from having more expectations than patience, with my impatience then leading me to look for the opinions of others rather than developing my own.
For the sake of bettering ourselves, it is important to remember personal lessons with purpose.
Joshua Udvardy is a UF engineering freshman. His column appears on Wednesdays.
