I’m getting very sentimental in my last semester at the University of Idaho.
I stare at the dorms and wonder who occupies the rooms I spent all my time in. I wonder what those freshmen are majoring in, if they have friends like I do and if they’re struggling the way I did.
No one prepared me for the changes I would go through when I moved into the Gooding residence hall on Aug. 22, 2013. No one told me that when I walk across that stage on May 13, 2017, that I would be a completely different person.
My college career started off rocky. I was never an excellent student like many of my friends were, and my time management skills didn’t exist. I spent most of my freshman year writing bad English papers two hours before they were due and barely squeaking by to get an average grade. I was uninspired, undecided and lazy.
It wasn’t until I walked into my first class of sophomore year that I wanted to work hard for my professor and for myself. That professor inspired me so much, I had to pull myself up and start actually applying myself. From that semester on, I worked hard, made sure I tried hard even on the worst assignments and was proud of the work I was doing. My GPA grew from a 2.1 my first semester to three 4.0s in a row.
I’m not sure when the shift happened — when I started working hard for myself — but it changed my life. It changed how I looked at my life and how I interacted with everyone. I taught myself to manage my time, I felt responsible enough to adopt my dog and I felt that the harder I worked in school, the harder I worked in every other aspect of my life.
Once I started succeeding and proving to myself that I could do this, I took on more. I thought it would make it more challenging and sometimes it did, but it only made me improve as a student and as a human being.
Students get so caught up in the busy schedules and stress that they forget to take time for themselves. Students should take time to learn more than just what is in the textbooks. College is an investment in myself, so taking time for myself is important to me. No one comes and goes the same person — that’s the beauty of college. It’s four years of growth.
I think sometimes it’s easy to forget the real reason people go to college. Yes, it is about an education, but it’s much deeper than what we are learning in our classrooms. I have learned so much about myself and others that are just as important as what I have learned to get that diploma.
Counting down the days until graduation, I find myself feeling even fonder toward this campus, this school and the people who populate it. I am so fond of this campus because it helped me grow into someone I can be proud of. It’s surreal to think of the 18-year-old girl who stepped onto this campus four years ago and how little I knew about myself. College was the best four years of my life because I found out what I could be.
Cassidy Callaham can be reached at [email protected]