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IlluminatiRex

IlluminatiRex's College Adventures - Freshman Year

Rating: 3 votes, 3.67 average.
So, my Freshman year of College has finally ended. What a ride that was, and I really can't wait for what's in store for my next semester. Some background on me - I'm an Anthropology major who hopes to eventually go into Archeology. Especially Battlefield Archeology of the first world war. Oh, and I changed the names of my friends for this.

It started back in August, well, even a bit earlier than that - June of 2014. June was Freshman Orientation. It was a hot day, and luckily my campus is directly on the water. Students were separated into different groups, not really related to major (except for the Engineering majors). I was part of the "Green" group, and got a nice green water bottle to boot. So we spent the morning touring the campus (which I had done previously), but then came the "team-building" exercises. The bane of nearly everyone I've ever met. They were silly little group things just to get to know each other a little better. After that we had the head librarian give us a speech about how to use the Library's online resources, and then we had to sign up for classes. With basically no time to really think about it, I was signed up for an 8 A.M. class (never again), and a couple other things I found interesting.

After that it was over. I didn't really stay in contact with anyone from Orientation, and spent the rest of the summer hanging out at home doing essentially nothing and didn't see any of those people again until August, prior to school starting up when they had a "Welcome to College" sort of day for the Freshman. It had some similarities to Orientation, except everyone was in a giant group and there was a barbecue and ice-cream at the end. After that there was still about a week left until classes actually started.

But before that, in August I got my first real job. It's a weekend gig at an art museum, housing some very valuable plaster casts of ancient Statues from a variety of cultures (Assyrian, Greco-Roman, Egyptian, etc). I had volunteered there prior to getting the job, for about a year. I did various things such as accessioning stuff in the collections (it was being moved from the Attic to the new Collection Storage), moving stuff around, setting up the gift shop, and various stuff like that. However, my new job has me basically turning the lights on and off on the weekends and running the giftshop then.

At the time of classes starting in late August, I actually didn't have my driver's license and had to have my mom drop me off and pick me up. Boy that was exciting. For the first few months, while I made a few friends in my classes, I didn't get to know them all that well because I didn't get to hang out with them at all. Oh, and I mastered procrastination.

I've come to the conclusion that the normal human state is to procrastinate as much work as possible. All my friends do it, I do it, and I swear my parents do. I meen geez, this semester I waited until the night before to do a term paper for my Political Science class, a 10 page research paper. God, what a bad idea that was. I didn't even start it until 10pm the night before and didn't finish until 5 in the morning. We had to present it as part of our group. At least I ended up with a 94 on the thing, would have been 99 if I hadn't missed that one class to do yard work (attending the presentations was part of the grades, each class missed would be 5 points off).

Anyway, so by mid-September I had gotten my driver's license and could finally get myself there. It was then I started hanging out more with my friends.

Caroline, what is there to say about her? Other than that she's someone I wouldn't have seen myself being friends with a year ago. Now, I consider myself to be a fairly straightedge dude (Save for coarse language, I think I'd make some sailors blush with my mouth), never drank or done drugs or anything like that. So for me being friends with her has been an interesting but great experience. Caroline is pretty much the one person I've met that I really trust with a lot of things, and that's something I've always had issues is confiding stuff in people. I always tended to bottle stuff up and never tell anyone, but Caroline is different. It's really nice to actually have a friend that I can confide in like that.

Oh, and Jeff. Jeff the vet. Man, he's great. He's a lot like a dad, lots of advice and dad jokes abound. Dunno what I'd do without him. He has a lot of great stories too about his time in Afghanistan too. I can't forget a lot of my other friends, including my crush, but there would be too many for me to list and say something about. Every single one of them is awesome. One thing that college has helped me with is the social anxiety I dealt with a lot (and still do a bit), but man, I don't know where I'd be without my new friends. We do bowling nights every month, though since it's through a thing with our school, that'll be on halt for the summer sadly.

Oh, and what is college without classes? My classes have all been from, yes even that 8am Freshman English class I had to take (even though I scored a 5/5 on the AP English test in High School...). It would be hard for me to pick a favorite class, as I'm an Anthropology major and love my Anthropology classes; but on the flipside I also really loved my "Living Through War since 1500" class, or that one about the evolution of the city in European culture. My Anthropology professor this semester even hooked me up with the former State Archeologist, who still does digs, and I'll most likely go on one with him over the summer. Classes have been great, and I've loved them all - Even though I procrastinate a lot. I really shouldn't, as I said earlier. That's something I really need to get over. In the first Anthropology class I took, we had these weekly assignments. Now the caveat to them being weekly is that they weren't actually due until the final. Guess when I waited to? That's right, the night before the final to do an entire semester's worth of work. I even had to wake up early to finish what I couldn't the night before. Still pulled an A in the class though. I gotta avoid situations like that in the future; bad for the soul and bad for my grade if I can't actually end up managing it.

Oh, and why didn't anyone just tell me College is just more school? Like it was always held up as this huge standard and everything and I really didn't know what to expect. It's just more school! Wish I had been told that sooner, or I wouldn't have worried as much before my first semester. I've been finding it easier than High School, though I feel that has a lot to do with scheduling and the fact I don't have nearly as many classes.

Anyway, I think I've done enough babbling on for now.

Updated May 10, 2015 at 09:43 PM by IlluminatiRex

Tags: college, life
Categories
Entertainment , Creative Writing

Comments

  1. Shankbot de Bodemloze's Avatar
    Procrastination, the bane of my life. :laughter:

    Glad to hear you've enjoyed it. :)
  2. IlluminatiRex's Avatar
    Only further proving my hypothesis about procrastination there Shankbot :P
  3. Hitai de Bodemloze's Avatar
    I was much the same in first year. However, the best piece of advice I ever received about college/university, was to treat it like a job. Go in at 9am and leave at 5pm, even if you don't have lectures. Last year was full of last minute deadlines, stress and general tearing out of hair. This year has been busy, still stressful at times, but a lot easier and a lot more fulfilling