The Final Post

Honestly I think that during my freshman year at Ole Miss I have learned more about myself  than I have in my entire life.

I was raised in a small town with not many people and nothing really to do. Some people’s glory days were their high school years, mine were not. I hated high school and everything about it, and I couldn’t wait any longer to leave Washington, NC. In my very first Daily Write first semester I actually talked about this. I talked about how tired I was of my friend group and how ready I was to leave home. More importantly however, I talked about how excited I was to be at Ole Miss. Ever since I applied and was accepted into this school, I had been dreaming of finally being here. I didn’t know much about Ole Miss, but I had heard from social media and lots of different people how pretty the girls were and how great the parties were. And as a senior in high school, that’s all I could ask for. Honestly the only things I was really expecting from my freshman year here were to join a fraternity, meet tons of beautiful women, and party as often as possible while still maintaining a 3.0 GPA. Did I get what I was expecting? Yes, I definitely did. But I also got so much more than just that.

If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that my freshman writing classes would completely change my outlook on society and myself for the rest of my life, there wouldn’t be a chance I would believe you. Even now looking back, it kind of blows my mind how much this writing class has actually done for me. Before this class I had absolutely no study ethic whatsoever. High school writing was a joke to me, as I never really had a teacher that was passionate about teaching it. However after finally having a teacher that really cared about the subject, I feel like my writing improved 200%. In my final post of the first semester, The Growth of a Young Writer, I talked about how much my work ethic had changed and about how much stronger I felt as a writer. And as I got into writing 102, it only got better. Until this past semester I had never gotten an A on a paper in my life, but this semester I had two. My writing had actually improved so much that even my mom was shocked. She hadn’t read any of my papers since high school, and when I emailed her my Cause and Effect Argument Essay she at first didn’t even believe I wrote it.

Not only did this class drastically improve my work ethic, but it entirely changed my views on myself and the people around me. One of the things that I absolutely loved about writing 102 was that you get to keep the same topic for all of your assignments. What this does is it allows you to focus your research on one idea for an entire semester, and with that much time and research you learn to understand your topic completely. The topic that I chose was traditional masculinity ideologies. I honestly chose this topic because I had no idea what to write about, and since I’m a guy I felt it would be easy. However, even just the first synthesis paper completely changed my mind about everything. Growing up as a boy I never noticed the pressures to conform to the ideologies of “being a man”, but now I see how big of a problem it actually is. Without us even knowing it we are pressuring our children to conform to exactly what society wants them to be. Boys aren’t pushed to be dancers or artists, they’re pushed to be football players and lawyers. But what if that young boy who only plays football to fit in actually dreamed of being in ballot but was just too afraid to tell anyone because society might call him gay? How have we let this happen? Before our kids even know who they are or want to be, society is pressuring them to conform to these extremely strict traditional norms just so they’ll fit in like everyone else.

I used to have my heart set on having a son who played football and always had girls around him, but now I realize how stupid that is. Just from this one writing class I’ve learned that I have no right to pressure anyone to be something they may not want to be, but instead to let them figure it out themself.

Along with how great this writing class was for me, this past school year has been the best year of my life by far. Right before I left for college, my dad gave me some advice about college that I have lived by throughout this entire year. He told me, “My favorite thing about college was the memories. You’ll eventually forget about all the schoolwork and sleepless nights you had to get through. But the great times you make with the people you love, those memories will never go away.” Ever since then I made it my goal to make as many amazing memories as I could my freshman year here. Even now just looking back at everything I did this year, there are certain times that I know I will never forget.

I’ll remember sneaking onto the football field at 4 in the morning my second night at school with a girl I had just met at the bars. I’ll remember going to the gym and playing basketball with a random group of guys I barely knew, but would eventually become my absolute closest friends. I’ll remember calling my dad after I received my bid to Kappa Sigma  and how excited I was to tell him. I’ll remember taking the stairs up 7 floors with a girl that I had just been introduced to because she was scared of elevators, and I’ll remember her eventually becoming my girlfriend. I’ll remember the last night of spring break sneaking into a construction site and climbing to the roof to watch the sunrise, and I’ll remember just thinking about how perfect life was.
Although all of these memories were amazing, there is one memory that stands out. That memory is falling in love with Oxford, and never wanting to leave.