How in the world is it January already?

If there is one thing I cannot believe about 2018, it is that it is here already. This means that 2017 is over and it’s time for a more in-depth analysis of what it taught me, as well as what my first semester at Gustavus has taught me. It won’t be sans difficulty, but now I’m able to lay the past year out before me as if it were a road-map and examine its implications for the future.

What strikes me as most incredible about the past year was all of the mass amounts of achievements I made.

As if finishing a semester at my dream school weren’t enough, the journey getting there was a whirlwind. At the beginning of the year I had just returned from Puerto Rico after finding out I had been accepted to my top choice school with the Dean’s scholarship, already a life-changing path leading up to the new year, and one that made it impossible to imagine that last year could’ve been any better.

Leading up to move-in day (September 1st, 2017) had already been exceptional: I had turned eighteen, gotten a passport, hit the two-and-a-half year mark on my high school job, attended prom, graduated high school, and left the United States for the first time ever (I visited Paris, France in June and it was truly the most indescribably amazing and inspiring thing I’ve ever done), I had even seen my celebrity crush live in concert. But shortly after these things, I moved into my first-year dorm and was taken for a second whirlwind journey, the first semester towards my B.A.

If there is one thing I’m certain of, you do not pass go and collect $200 per-say, without picking up a massive heaping of valuable life lessons. One of the first things that becomes obvious when you begin a college career is how much people lack in street smarts, how much real-world experience people actually have, and truthfully it varies so immensely from person to person so you really have to be cognizant or sympathetic to the reality that some might not possess the same skill-set as you and vice versa.

Some begin without work experience, a car, or a credit score, some have huge amounts of work experience and knowledge of car maintenance, but might not know how to balance a checkbook. Everyone does laundry differently, I don’t know, just go with it. Point being, the first semester of college is exceptional because you meet such a wide variety of types of people/personalities who come from different backgrounds and with different skills, which is incredibly helpful if you haven’t been exposed to any different from you where you come from.

You better your time management abilities instantly, because you have to. The level of work and responsibilities you have added to your life is so prominent and overwhelming, that it requires you to strike a balance and experiment with different lifestyles, it is truly a time of self-discovery. You learn how to live with other people and work with other people in the same age demographic as you which is a solid step toward preparing you for living in a community like a neighborhood later on in life.

In addition to these things, perhaps the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in college thus far in between balancing classes, the workload, countless hours of orchestra rehearsals every week, working an on-campus job, and writing these articles every week is to take everything day by day, slowing down and enjoying the small details of everyday life, without rushing through anything. This cuts the stress down, while also helping you manage and be more thoroughly productive and make sure that because life moves so quickly, you never miss a beat.