Ramblings

Well... what can I say about my first semester at college? Penn State is amazing. I'm glad I'm here. But that's enough of the Miss America answer.... I think my first semester gave me a good foundation for what I can look forward to. Hopefully my teachers will all be as amazing as they were this semester, because I firmly believe that the teacher makes the class. I got a lot of requirements over with, so now Freshman Composition, Calculus, and my foreign language requirement are out of my way, and I was even able to start right into the introductory IST course.

I learned a lot this semester, not just from my classes, but also about college, and about myself. Getting out and doing things is a very intimidating prospect for me. At home in my dorm is my comfort zone, and I really need to work on getting myself up and out more often, or I'm going to miss out on things. I already missed a lot after only one semester, and even thought I've still got a lot of time here, that semester is time I'll never get back. My workload isn't much harder for me than it was in high school, so there's really no excuse for my sitting in my room all the time.

For the first time in my life, I screwed up a grade that actually counted. I failed my Calculus midterm badly, but I should still be able to redeem my overall grade. In the long run, I think this experience will be good for me. It should at least teach me that I am not invincible, and there are going to be things in life that I will actually have to work for instead of just gliding along.

Spanish reaffirmed my knowledge that I really dislike Spanish. It took care of my language requirement though. Maybe I'll try something else--I've been considering Japanese--but we'll see. At least I am no longer required to commit myself or my brain cells to a different language. I have enough trouble communicating with people as it is.

Although I had trepidations, I'm glad I ended up in English 030. At first I was very distressed that I'd clawed my way through AP English in high school only to have to suffer more of the same, but English 030 was nothing like that. It gave me new respect for English as a subject, which is good, because I really have no right to be judging a major I'm not in.

My First Year Seminar and IST 110H both managed to further convince me that I love my major. Everything I did in both of those classes was really cool, which gives me high hopes for the rest of my time here. I hope I'll be able to take more honors classes in my major as well, because I think that contributed a lot of my positive experience.