Once there was a girl named Elizabeth. She was always a good student and worked very hard for her grades. When she got to college she still worked hard but she overloaded her schedule and didn't apply herself quite as well as she had in the past. She didn't get bad grades, they just weren't as good as they could've been. At the end of her freshman year she had a 3.06 GPA. A year later, near the end of the first semester of her sophomore year, Elizabeth was getting ready to study abroad. She was worried because the programs she wanted to go on required 3.2 and 3.3 GPAs. She went to talk to an advisor at the Off Campus Studies office and was told to go ahead and apply but to make sure she had second choices ready. Her advice sounded logical so Elizabeth started looking for alternate programs. Then, several weeks later she spoke with a different advisor who told her, as nicely as possible, that she shouldn't even bother applying to her first choice schools. This angered Elizabeth for two reasons. First of all, she'd never liked being told no and, second of all, she knew it was her own fault that her GPA was so low and so it would be her own fault if she couldn't get into the programs. But, Elizabeth was a very stubborn girl. VERY stubborn. She decided that she was going to play the game her way. Just like she did when applying to college, she would apply to the programs she wanted first and worry about finding a second choice later. Will Elizabeth's stubbornness serve her in the end? We'll just have to wait and see.
Unfortunately, this is a true story and, clearly, it's mine. It looks like I'll be able to work things out but who knows. The point is, learn from my mistake and keep on top of your grades. Don't think, like I did, that because a class is easy you can slack off, don't procrastinate, and don't pretend that the adjustment period after entering college excuses you from putting in your best effort. I regret having done all of that not only because it might make getting abroad a little more difficult, but also because I didn't get as much out of my classes as I could have. Kenyon is an amazing and incredibly difficult school but instead of focusing on how great it is, I stressed about how hard it was, put myself in an "I can't achieve anything here" mindset, and, for the first time in my life, underachieved. Big, big, big regret. So now I've got two resolutions for the upcoming semester:
1. Work around my mistake to get myself abroad.
2. Appreciate Kenyon more and have enough confidence in my intelligence to push myself to excel again.
Exciting. Also exciting...next week's post includes a big announcement!
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