My Freshman Year: The Midterm Review

With my midterm exams finally over, I’m taking this opportunity to do a little midterm reviewing of my own. Now seems to be the perfect time to reflect on the first quarter of my freshman year and to start looking forward to the rest of the semester, the next semester, and, well, just the future in general. As scary as that sounds.

When I first started counting down to college, I was doing so with a level of excitement you’d expect from a kid who has just eaten four bowls of sugary cereal. I couldn’t wait to get out of high school and show my stuff at an institution of higher learning, although admittedly, the idea of college itself was fairly daunting (living among 22 year-olds/life without Mommy and Daddy/doing my own laundry/etc.). Towards the end of the summer, the dream started to become a frightening reality. Was I ready? Could I handle college life? Would I get a roommate from hell?!

Then, college. Ahh, college. Orientation was definitely awkward at first, but a few weeks into school, I was absolutely loving it (and, of course, I still am, in spite of all the reading I have to do for class tomorrow). I got extremely lucky and quickly became friends with my hallmates, and as classes started, I began developing friendships with people who share my passions, understand my sense of humor, and appreciate my personal brand of insanity. Weekend movie marathons and game nights became my weekly rituals.

Then, there’s school itself. Although I’ve never worked so hard in my life, I really love what I’m studying. My professors intimidated me at first with their brilliance and extensive vocabularies, but I soon discovered the keys to doing well in their classes and getting the most out of each lesson. And now that midterms have come and gone, it’s back to the daily grind for the remainder of the semester.

Course registration for the spring semester, however, is proving to be more of a burden than I expected it to be. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be so concerned about it, but my ambitious nature is forcing me to plan out the rest of my college career by five o’clock next Monday. I hope to double-major in English and film studies, which is possible to do at my school but requires a lot of advance planning. Which is why I have Post-Its and spreadsheets all over my desk with potential schedules for each and every remaining semester I have at college. It looks like a tornado ripped through my room, sparing all but my poor desk.

Since this is a midterm review of my college experience to this day, I suppose I should assign a grade to it. I’m in a pretty generous mood, so I’ll give it an A. It really has been a wonderful start so far, and I look forward to seeing how the rest of the semester – as well as my collegiate life – unfolds!

To the current college students out there, how would you grade the first half of your fall semester?

[Photo courtesy of asymptotia.com]