School is about to start, and for a lot of people that means starting their freshman year in college. Personally, I am super excited to go back to school. Freshman year was scary but also wonderful. I have only been at Trinity University for one year but have already had so many meaningful experiences. I think that one of the things incoming freshman always worry about it being successful in college. One of my favorite things about Trinity is how everyone around you really wants you to succeed as much as you do, and I wanted to share some examples of how I have seen that in just one short year.

First off, at the beginning of the year, we had individual appointments with our assigned advisors to help us with our schedules. The appointments were supposed to only last 30 minutes long each, and they told us to try and have our top three schedules ready prior to our meeting so our advisor had something to work with. As a nervous freshman, I came with three schedules, and my advisor and I were able to work out a schedule that worked for me in about ten minutes. Our meeting could’ve just been done like that, but we stayed for almost another hour just talking about school and life and what I wanted out of college. I will never forget how awesome it was to know my advisor really cared right off the bat.

The other things that really made me happy were the things that my art professors did. I am an art major, and in both of my art classes this past year, the professors made sure they knew who the art majors were and what they wanted out of the class. In my design class, I wanted to do a project that required a giant paper press, and my professor personally took my down to another art studio and taught me how to use the press. In my drawing class, I had a super weird idea for my final involving a skeleton and my professor got right on board and found me a life size skeleton model to work off of. When you are at a university with so much space and materials to work with, the only thing that makes it better are professors who want you to use those things to their highest potential.

Lastly, one of my favorite memories of the year. I took an accounting class second semester, and I was horrible at it. As you now know, I am an art person, and no numbers of any kind make sense to me. Even though accounting is basically just addition. Anyway, I failed some quizzes and a test and went to my professor’s office hours to talk about what I should do. Long story short, we decided I should drop the class. It is such a good memory though, because after we decided that I sat with this professor for the rest of her office hours and talking about what I am interested in, what I want to do, and how funny we thought it was that some people are good with numbers and others are good with colors. Turns out, my ex-accounting professor loves art but is terrible at making it. Her office hours eventually ran out, and she asked me out to lunch because we enjoyed talking so much. What I love about this is that I was dropping this professor’s class, and I was obviously never going to do anything with accounting, but she still wanted to get to know me and give me advice. Even though she now had no use for me at all, she knew that I could still use some of her wisdom and comfort. She wants me to succeed, and that’s what I love about Trinity University.