When I left home for college, I never thought about the end of the year coming so quickly. Especially when I was in the transfer process, I did not consider t how quickly my second semester would end because it had seemed as though time was moving so slowly. Honestly, I am having nostalgia when thinking back to all the memories I made, the lessons I learned and the ideas I discovered, all in just one school year. To say the least, this year has been a whirlwind and it has come to a close in the blink of an eye.

As we move forward, I think it is important to reflect on how far we have come over this year; we owe it to ourselves to recognize how each of us has grown. Even if you did not have the best year academically or still struggle to manage time, having confidence is necessary in entering into a new school environment, making a schedule, getting to classes on time, completing assignments, creating new friends and even balancing family life all by yourself. Just because freshman year is over does not mean you will be perfect next semester, most importantly because you will always learn new things, and life is always changing. That being said, your motivation and confidence to move forward is admirable, and everything you have been through this year highlights the confidence that you may not recognize in yourself.

With this, the most important lesson that I learned this year is to have confidence. I was raised to always have confidence, but in this case, actions speak louder than words. It is one thing to say that you have confidence, then really acting with confidence.

I was reading a magazine cover recently that said Be Bold, Be Brave, Make Noise. I not only changed schools this year, but I also changed my major… three times. For someone who was certain she wanted to be an international business major, I made a total 360. Now that I am a psych major and on the pre-med track, I can say that I am happy with my plan. I learned that recognizing my passions, desires and interests was a rocky road to climb, especially because I had to learn what I am not passionate about before I recognized what I actually am interested in.

Now that I know my interests (or so I think), I am at a more confident mindset. This definitely affects my actions, thoughts and plans in a direction of certainty. Having confidence is all about the outlook and attitude. Confidence is the key root to achieving accomplishments. At the end of the day, life goes on and it really became apparent that we are all living in the same moment, but what we do with our time and how we act is what differentiates our uniqueness from our peers and others. We may as well live our lives with the confidence to be bold, be brave and make noise because in 10, 20, even 50 years from now we will be asking ourselves ‘What have I done with my life? What have I accomplished?’ I certainly do not want to disappoint myself in wasting the time I have been given. Don’t we all want to be proud of ourselves? May every action you complete be done in wholeness with 100% effort. Having confidence is key in accomplishing our passions for ourselves with our full devotion. Cheers to that!