hey all!
happy martin luther king jr day today! its a super special day to be celebrating and i’m happy i got to drop by the blog and offer you wishes for your day of service, rest, or whatever you’ve got going on today! personally, i’ve had a BUSY first week which i can probably begin explaining this friday so i’ve taken today to getting myself in order for this upcoming week of school we have ahead – getting myself totally ready for all this semester has got ahead for me.
that being said, i feel like i want to do a little review on first semester here because it has been a massive part of my life since august and i feel like its neccessary to share whether you can empathize or sympathize with my experiences, whether you’ve been to college or not and mostly whether you’re curious of what i was up to during my time, here we go!
i’ve done reflections on this previously but probably the first month of college was the hardest for me, i was getting used to being SO FAR away from home and was really homesick, this only really hit in the mornings and evenings when i was most quietly alone. i seriously remember wanting to leave all the time because only then did it feel so far. i always had a dream of attending college in DC, and it was finally here but i realized how far DC was from home when i was finally here, i’ll give this to you as an example: it takes approx 5 & 1/2 hours to fly from DC to LA (and vice versa, i can’t tell you which is longer) and only about 7 hours to fly from DC to LONDON! like are you kidding me, i could be in a different country in a similar amount of time as it takes just to get to school and back. so that was weird.
but my homesickness really stopped when i got to be close friends with my roommates and neighbors. we started to have longer and longer conversations that went deeper than i could have imagined and i honestly can’t remember my night routines without them and it’s weird but at the same time very comforting to live with 3 other people in the same room. but they became some of my best friends here because we spent so much time together that of course it became natural. now we have sleepovers, play never have i ever and honestly just really enjoy each other’s company. it’s definitely a challenge when you live with other people, but when you get along with them like i do, it becomes different.
so classes also started out with a real bang since i am an art major and we start out with major classes right away! i took drawing, sculpture and design fundamentals as well as a contemporary art history class focusing on the 80’s to present time and a basic class that everyone takes a GW called UW: university writing which comes in a variety of different subjects and topics for people to choose and i chose something that focused on politics. soon i learned that my schedule was not good, i was not taking sculpture like i should have been but was taking painting instead, so i had to change my schedule after the add drop period and get it all fixed. thank god i was able to fix it but i was officially two weeks late in one class and i had to pick up on a project that everyone else had two more weeks on.
but after that small fiasco, the semester went well and i really flourished in my classes and easily made the best of my first semester. i loved my classes and even though i didn’t expect to, i really loved both my drawing and sculpture classes.
a few things i learned about GW which wasn’t exactly what i expected. i mentioned many times before about food. i was so excited to get out of the cafeteria vibes but i soon got really bored of my food options as i only go to some restaurants because i’m picky and i know what i like. this is problematic because i get so bored of all my food options and food is honestly a huge part of life.
i also learned gw is really hard to make friends at. it’s really hard to meet people because there’s not a ton of spirit here or anything which really drives us into a community and it’s super easy to feel really alone being here. and it’s hard not to feel that way all the time.
so with that being said, for this semester, my goals include joining more clubs and organizations, cooking more on campus in the thurston kitchen, and exploring and preparing for summer jobs and career options.
i’d love to hear about your first semesters – so leave a comment about your thoughts!
