In high school, I was always the student trying his best to stall class with witty remarks and jokes. Coincidentally, I was good at it. So good at it in fact that even the teachers seemed to enjoy my classroom satire.
Something people should know about me is that I’m most comfortable in a crowd of people who know me. Attending a small high school made it simple for me to become popular and make a lot of close friends. Despite the relationships I had built there, I was more than thrilled to travel from Charleston to Winthrop.
Independence was always important to me when I was living at home and being able to have that at Winthrop has been one of the best experiences. My roommate quickly became like a brother to me and the inner circle of friends that we have built feels like family. The diversity at Winthrop allowed me to come in contact with a vast group of different people from different places.
So far, my biggest struggle has been finding time to do everything: homework and projects for my classes, actually going to class, going to the gym, eating properly, writing for this paper (am I allowed to say that?), being social and just relaxing and finally, getting enough sleep so that I can wake up the next day and do it again!
It is easy to find beauty in the business though. In high school, I could easily ace my quizzes and tests without even studying and do my homework the night before, all while playing video games with my friends and skateboarding. While this was fun, it quickly got old. I began to look forward to the stress, sweat and tears that college life would bring me and now here I am.
As a freshman, I know I shouldn’t be complaining about stress yet. Any self-respecting upperclassmen could never read this article without finding me and educating me on the fact that freshmen have it the easiest and should never ever complain about our luxurious and fantastical lives because believe them, it will get so much worse.
I really can’t blame upperclassmen for being this way, and obviously not all upperclassmen fit in this category because I have a lot of older friends who are not.
So far, in my third-and-a-half week of university life at Winthrop, I’m enjoying myself immensely. At my small high school, I never had the chance to write like this or even write very much besides my yearbook class and my school assignments. Here, I get to do what I love and started writing for the paper even before I arrived here. College can definitely be more stressful than high school — everyone knows that — but there are so many avenues of study that it’s almost impossible for someone to not find their calling if they haven’t already.
I’m here able to literally follow my dreams and make even more friends than I made in high school. Yes, the classes are challenging and fending for myself can be difficult sometimes and I never get quite enough sleep, but all those struggles are worth it when you’re finally able to do what you love.
