As the fall semester comes to a close, everyone should look back and reflect on how the last four months went. Friendships formed, memories were made, grades were received, and change was had. Maybe some important changes occurred in your life or maybe you enjoyed the same season of life that you were in before the semester started. No matter what happened, you have lived a lot of life since August and it’s important for everyone to take a moment and think about the things that went right, or wrong, since you came back to college from summer break.

In this past semester I started my sophomore year of college. Freshman year was the greatest year of my life and I was excited for that chapter to continue. I had made the decision to stay on campus another year and I was looking forward to living in the newest and nicest dorm. I was looking forward to being on the other side of my sorority’s recruitment. I was also looking forward to being back on meal plan and having access to so many different types of foods every night. But most importantly, I was looking forward to being back with my friends. I live over two hours away from any of the friends that I had made in college and being apart from them all summer was really hard. I missed them and I was excited to have the two weeks during recruitment to reconnect with them. To say the least, in early August I was very ready to start sophomore year.

Once I actually arrived back in Athens, things were better than I ever could have imagined them to be. I picked up where I left off with my friends and it felt like I had never left. Once classes started, I finally started to take classes that pertained to my major. I was taking the intros to my future career and learning valuable information that I will have to use in a job setting one day. As the semester went on, I picked up an internship with a nonprofit. The internship was extremely interesting and it gave me a valuable insight as to how nonprofit organizations work. In September I finally heard back from a job I had applied to over the summer. I had gotten the job and I started later that month. The rest of the semester was spent juggling class, internship, work, and social life. Somehow I held it all together and I actually enjoyed every minute of it. I also managed to apply to my major and get accepted. Lastly, and most importantly, this semester I applied to the Disney College Program and was accepted. Now I am packing up my room and preparing for a semester away from everything I know and love. To sum it all up, this has been the craziest and most wonderful four months of my life and I am so grateful to have gotten the chance to experience all of these things.

While this post seems more like a diary entry, the point is that it is extremely important for everyone to take a moment and think about what they accomplished this past semester. If you don’t take a moment to think about what has changed in your life, fifty years down the line you won’t remember anything about your college days. Everyone has had at least one thing happen this semester to be proud about and you should reflect on that. Everyone probably also has something to be sad about that happened in this past semester and it’s important to think about what went wrong so that you don’t repeat these mistakes. One of the best ways to remember what you’ve accomplished in the past semester is to write it all down. So grab a notebook and write about some of the experiences you’ve been lucky enough to live through. Write about your friendships, your classes, your struggles, and your triumphs. Reflect on your accomplishments from this past chapter of your life and prepare for the next one that lies ahead.