There were a lot of things I did wrong, or didn’t do at all, my first term at Drexel. Nevertheless, it was an invaluable learning experience and a wakeup call I definitely needed. I wouldn’t say I had too much fun, or worked too hard, or not hard enough, or any of that. No, it’s much simpler than that. I just needed to realize what I wanted for myself.
That may sound silly to some, but what I mean by that is I just needed to find the motivation I required to propel myself forward and keep myself moving along. The whole term I was being dragged along, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always being dragged: almost like I was running behind a car…with a rope attached. I needed to find the click in my head that would tell my body to get up in the morning, to get to class on time, to do my homework, and to be pro-active about my assignments. It really boils down to a matter of maturity. I believe that the struggle I encountered my first term here at Drexel was harsh, maybe a little harsher than I could wish to cope with, but in the end it was necessary to helping me find what I was looking for.
By no means am I driving the car yet, that’s where I want to be, but atleast I feel that I’m on my feet and running at the same speed as the car, and maybe I’m beginning to close the gap just a little bit. Meanwhile, my mind rambles on about the fact that I still have to get the laundry done that I didn’t get done over the weekend, it’s almost 10:00pm, I’m already extremely tired, I’ve yet to do the calc homework or chemistry homework that I should have done by tomorrow morning, and I have a class at 9:00am, which leaves me only three options: a) go to bed immediately and get up at 5 in the morning, b) go to bed after I get everything done and be miserably tired tomorrow morning, or c) drink lots of caffeine and stay up all night. I’m not a morning person, so option a is out of the question. I value my sleep greatly, as it greatly affects my performance mentally and physically, thus option c is out. I’ll hybridize and compromise the two solutions, I’ll get what I absolutely need to do tonight done, and when I wake up I’ll drink a lot of caffeine. Had I had the forward-minded-ness and initiative to think about things this way last term, I believe I may have done better in all of my classes. Honestly I just don’t think there’s any way I could have passed calc 1 last term and been able to succeed in calc II this term. I know I need at least a 3.00 gpa. I need it for my scholarship, I need it for my co-op employer, I need it for myself. But I want more. I want to feel like I know what I’m doing, and feel more than good about doing it. I want to be pro-active.
Reverting that tangent, I think the think I would have liked to change about last term was the amount of initiative I had. But reflection is only as good as the result of what has been learned from making the mistake. History often repeats itself, likewise, history is mankind’s greatest knowledge. Humanity knows far more now than all of the inhabitants of earth could possibly understand. Through the act of recording knowledge for use later, we can expand upon the base of knowledge we currently maintain. Thus, I need to go back and look at what I messed up last term so that I will not repeat myself this term. I believe I have done that by reflecting on last term through my own point of view by writing down the answer to a simple question of choice.
