As May comes to an end, I'm left reflecting on my past year, my first in university. Somehow, I finished my freshman year without dying, and I consider this a plus right now. I stayed at home for university and attended a school I can drive to, which is nice on the bank since I don't have to pay for housing, but it left me feeling alienated at times. Only having classes two or three days a week didn't necessarily help either, although I think it kept me sane for the first year. I'm not in college to party or do anything extraordinary, I'm really just here to get my degree and then get the fuck out of Texas tbh. This post isn't going to be one of those "I did everything and made a shit ton of friends and hardly went to class I love college etc" bullshit, just a very real post about my first two semesters in college.
Fall Semester 2017
For my first semester at university, I decided to take it slow and ease into things, so I only took 13 credit hours (four classes) plus one class that didn't count for any credits or towards my GPA, but every freshman had to take it to "get acclimated to college" or some bullshit. I've made a very simple schedule and put it above so you can see how my days played out. I also took one online class which was writing for mass media because my major was journalism (which I have changed now to English). Overall, I had a really good first semester at UTA. I didn't find my classes that difficult, which was nice, and I really enjoyed learning French. The only thing I hated about my first semester, besides the traffic coming home on Mondays, was the bullshit first-year course they made me take. I could see how it could be useful to people who moved away from home and don't know what they're doing with their life or any basic life skills like time management, but I have been ready for college for years, and I found the class to be the most draining and awful thing I have ever had to sit through. The professor was really nice, which helped, but the topics we went over made me want to stab myself in the eye with my pen. To this day, that's still the only truly awful class I've taken so far.
Personally, I didn't find college to be some extremely difficult and stressful thing, but I think part of that is because I stayed at home and commuted to school. It was much like high school in the sense that I still came home each night and was surrounded by family, I got to hang out with my cat, sleep in my own room without a roommate, and continue doing normal things that I've been doing for years. And even though I didn't move out, I still felt myself growing as an adult. I started baking a lot starting in the fall semester, which led to cooking, and now I make dinner for my family most nights. Plus, seeing money in my bank account for the first time made me suddenly feel more adult-like, which is the weirdest feeling. Now, when I want something, I buy it. There's no begging for money, it's just me deciding if I want to spend my own money or not.
Although I do stay at home, which causes me to feel like I'm stuck in high school sometimes, college is definitely nothing like high school. I wrote a whole post on the reasons why college is better than high school last September, which you can read here if you want, and I still agree with each point. Even if you commute to school, you learn and grow as a human and you realize how pointless high school is. Especially now that I've finished my first two semesters at UTA, I look back at my time in high school and think about what a complete and utter waste of time it was. And I didn't hate or love high school, I just tolerated it, but now that I'm removed from it, the world seems so much different. You are treated as an adult in college and your professors actually know what they're talking about and you just realize how different the two educational systems are. So if you're still in high school and you're worried about college, I say don't fret it. Honestly, it's not that bad; you will survive it.
Spring Semester 2018
This semester, I switched things up and only had classes Tuesdays and Thursdays, which you can see above. Not pictured though are the three online classes I took: French, Texas Politics, and the lecture part of Geology. In order for my scholarship to renew, I have to take 30 credit hours each year, which averages to 15 credit hours each semester, and since I decided to ease into things my first semester, it meant that I had to take more classes last semester. It should be noted that I do have the option to take winter and summer courses if I don't make it to 30 hours in the fall and spring semesters, but my dumbass didn't want to risk my scholarship not renewing, so I took 19 credit hours last semester, which equals out to six classes. I think the only thing that kept me sane last semester was the fact that I only had to drive to campus two times a week and half of my classes were online. Even though I was taking the most classes that I could possibly take, I still didn't find last semester too difficult. Partially because I didn't care if I got a few B's and partially because it was still just a lot of prereqs that you have to take to graduate. That being said, I loved my English class this semester. My professor was super fun and intelligent, and I loved coming to class. I also contracted my English class for the Honors College at school, which meant that I had to write a 15 page research paper at the end of the semester instead of a 10 page paper and I had to give a presentation on said paper, but it wasn't too bad, and I ended up getting a 95 on the paper, so thank the lord.
The only rough thing about the semester was the fact that I found myself feeling alienated at times. Only being on campus two days a week really limited my involvement, mostly because I had back to back classes, then I wanted to get home and beat traffic, plus most of the things I wanted to get involved in occurred on Mondays or Wednesdays, or when I had class. Now that I've gotten the hang of things at school, my schedule for next semester has a few breaks where I can go and get involved in something, plus I'm going to be on campus Mondays through Thursdays, which will be nice. Even though I found myself feeling alienated at times, my school pride increased this semester. My first semester, I was still riding the rejection from UT Austin, which made me resent UT Arlington. I felt inferior by going to UTA instead of UT, but this past semester I realized that I'm still getting a kick-ass education, and not going to Austin is saving me thousands of dollars in debt and housing fees. It took a few months, but I really love UTA, and when it's all said and done, nobody really cares where your degree is from as long as you have a degree.
As I mentioned before, I did switch my major this year. I went into college thinking I wanted to be a journalism major, then I realized that I hated writing in AP Style and all of the "journalism" I had done in high school was really just short stories, so I switched to an English major with a minor in Women and Gender Studies and I couldn't be happier. It took me at least two months to finally decide to change my major, but I'm so glad I did. I almost continued on with journalism out of spite, because everyone told me I would change my mind/major at least once, and I didn't want that to be true. Mostly, because I've heard that same thing said to me about my sexuality when I came out as bisexual. When I came out, someone told me that I would change my mind/have to choose between straight or gay, and that really irked me, so the decision to change my major took me forever, mostly because I didn't want to appear indecisive, but honestly, I would have been so unhappy continuing on the journalism path. After much debate, I changed my major and decided that I don't care what anyone else thinks of it because at the end of the day I'm still me, I'm still queer, and yes, I fucking changed my major when I realized I didn't like journalism.
All in all, I'm really proud of myself for everything I've learned about myself in the past year, just by going to college. I feel like I've matured into more of an adult, and I'm okay with that. I'm really excited for my next semester because I'm taking three different English classes, and one of them is about queer literature, so I'm going to spend the whole semester reading and discussing queer works and my gay ass can't wait. I hope all of you have had a good year, whether you're in school or not.
~Maddison
