Well… I guess the best way to say this is that I’ve been missing in action for a while. For the past couple of months, I haven’t been posting on social media, YouTube, or the blog – and I feel bad about it. Creative writing and content creation are my passions, but quite honestly, I haven’t had much time for it (though I’m getting back into the swing of it now)!

And that’s because – I moved into college and started classes. The transition took time, and that’s what I’ll be talking about in this post. While college has been exciting, it has also been a bunch of other things that are not talked about often – nervousness, self-doubt and discomfort. Of course, I don’t think I’ve successfully pushed through the discomfort, but I’m taking this journey one step at a time. 

Moving into my dorm was probably the most overwhelming part, and that could be a whole post in itself – I promise that I’ll write about tips for college move in later! 

At the university I’m attending, I had a pre-orientation program (where students pursued a class or an activity around a common interest) followed by a weeklong orientation, with classes starting the day after. So, for the first twelve days at my college, I was moving from event to event; needless to say, the days were jampacked. On one hand, it was nice, as I got to meet a lot of people, connect with upperclassmen, get around campus, and appreciate nature a bit more. 

However, it was also INCREDIBLY hot (being the middle of August on the East Coast), and standing outdoors in the sun trying to avoid mosquitoes got a bit annoying at times. In addition, there wasn’t a lot of time to unwind and get ready for classes; in previous summers I would take the last week of summer before school started to organize all my supplies and do some studying. Of course, this is just a unique aspect of freshman orientation, and I probably won’t have this problem next year. 

Nonetheless, there were some cherished memories from orientation 🙂 

Above is a photo of a butterfly I took during orientation!

Of course, as I’m writing this, I’m almost halfway through my first semester (which is crazy to think about)! I think it’s nice to be a bit removed from when classes started, as I’ve had the time to reflect a bit. 

For some reason, I can remember my first day of college classes so clearly (I can’t say the same about subsequent days). I think I considered it the official start to a new chapter; high school was behind me, and I would now genuinely work hard to build upon the foundation I laid prior, reach my goals, and NOT make the same mistakes I made in high school (though I haven’t I lived up to the last part completely). 

My first college lecture happened to be organic chemistry, followed by multivariable calculus an hour later. By noon, my lectures had finished – which is certainly a perk of college. However, when I walked out of the lecture, I realized that the type of work that I needed to do for class differed from what I was used to. I didn’t have more homework assignments per se (I have no assigned organic chemistry homework actually). However, it was up to me to study the concepts and make sense of it in a way that worked for my learning style. 

Well, I took a couple of midterms, and they didn’t go the best. I told myself I wouldn’t stress about my exams and put so much pressure on getting a high grade, but I did anyway (that part is still a work in progress). 

But I’m realizing that there’s so much room for improvement, especially as I adjust my study techniques (more on this later)! A great piece of advice an upperclassman gave me was to channel the stress and anxiety I felt after my midterms into improvement; I should instead be focusing on subsequent exams, and preparing for those. 

Other than academics, college has been… incredibly fast paced. It feels as if time has been going at twice the speed, with so many classes, events, and tasks overlapping. If there’s one thing that’s gotten me through the experience so far, it would be my Google Calendar. Time blocking has helped me find routine in all these moving pieces. 

For now, I’m trying to find more time to integrate my hobbies (mainly content creation), so some exciting writing and videos are in the works…