Tag: Growth

If I Could Bottle It Up, I’d Bottle It Up

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As I pack up my dorm room and take finals in all my classes, I start to choke up thinking of all of my expectations coming into this year and how they were met, how they were not and how my freshmen year was so much more than I could’ve ever imagined. I think of the person I was when I moved here in August and I’m blown away by how much I’ve grown as a student and person and how much one year could mean to me.

I expected my life as a student in college to be the same as it was in high school which was absolute trash but it turned out to be quite the opposite. Coming to Ole Miss and away from the toxic environment that was my high school has changed me as a student for the better. In this year as a student I’ve realized that caring about doing my best will produce better results than caring about being perfect ever will. If you would’ve told me in high school that I would have a 109% in Business Calculus in college I would’ve laughed in your face because I almost failed math in high school but because I’m focusing on truly learning and doing my best I’ve become better in subjects I never thought I could be good in. I’ve also realized that reading one essay that may have seemed insignificant to the rest of my classmates was the first time in my life my feelings about the elite education system and my past in it were validated. I knew from one week of college my identity as a student and person had shifted for the better but it wasn’t until that essay that my feelings were validated. That one essay picked by Mrs. B for my Writing 102 class was “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League” by William Deresiewicz and that one essay manifested an entire semester’s worth of assignments and research. I became a better student because of this essay and this research because I learned that being a good student isn’t how high my grades are but being a good student means doing the best I can and taking full advantage of education as a way to grow in every aspect of myself.

An actual screenshot of my math grade that I would’ve never expected to happen!!!

As for me as a person in college I expected to grow in the usual ways everyone talks about like dealing with being away from home for the first time, handling being on my own to take care of myself, etc. and obviously those growth spurts happened but I grew in other ways that seem far bigger than those. I came here in August so excited to live with my roommate and for the year that we would live in our little shoebox of a dorm room we would make a home and a countless memories together but that didn’t happen in the slightest. My roommate hates being at Ole Miss and has wanted nothing more than to leave Oxford from the minute she got here and that affected us living together because she barely left the room all year and claimed it as hers alone even though we live together. Going to college away from home was hard and not having somewhere where I could truly call home was even harder. I feel like I’ve lived in limbo but what kept me centered was that I had a new life here and I loved it so much that not having one physical place to go to didn’t matter because I was creating a home for myself in everything and everyone around me in Oxford.

I created a home in the law school Einstein’s for it brought me bagels and a study spot for the entire year. I created a home in the connections I’ve made with my teachers especially my EDHE teacher who has become my mentor that I couldn’t have survived this year without. I created a home in 3 am drives to the Lamar Park neighborhood with one of my best friends that always seem to fix whatever’s wrong in our lives. I created a home in Kappa where I’ve met so many lifelong friends and been given so many incredible opportunities like representing my chapter at Leadership Academy. I’ve made a home in every person and every thing that has made me love Ole Miss and my life here.

I think that for every event that’s happened in my life there’s a song that goes with it for one reason or another. Other than the fact that as freshmen as a whole I think all of us will think of Closer by the Chainsmokers when we think of our freshmen year. The song of freshmen year for me is Bottle It Up by Sam Hunt because there a few other things I think of when I think of wanting to bottle up a time and keep it forever. In this one year alone, I’ve learned that other people have experienced the same thing I did when I was in high school, that I’m a better student when I just focus on doing the best I can, that even though I wanted a roommate who would create a home with me I can survive without it and that sometimes home is where you let your heart rest instead of your head.

(Every freshmen ever when we hear Closer)

I read this quote the other day and I think it sums up how I feel about my freshmen year ending.

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”
I’m going to miss my friends I met this year that I now can’t picture my life without. I’m going to miss the teachers who’ve guided me along the way to make it through this year. I’m going to miss my favorite study spots, restaurants, and hangouts because some of my best memories this year were made in them. And I’m going to miss who I’ve become this year the most because who I’ve become this year is the best me I’ve ever been to date and for who I am at this moment I will never have so much to look forward to again in my life. So I will miss who I am right now because as of right now I’m still a freshmen and the best is yet to come.

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Strength in the Struggle

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Through this writing 101 I’ve learned to appreciate the struggle- that scary, stressful point in a student’s life where you have absolutely no idea how to start an assignment, or get past a block or get an idea out of your head and onto a paper. In high school, the struggle stopped me but through this course I’ve learned to use that struggle to my advantage.

The struggle isn’t a bad thing even if it seems like it is. It’s a motivator of sorts that pushes me to do my best work possible. Having so many ideas about where to go with a paper or stressing about how to make the flow of paper better aren’t bad traits, they’re traits I have because I care about my work.

In my blog posts, I often wrote about not being able to get my ideas out of my head and onto the paper or being at a loss for which direction I should go in. In high school I never asked for help if I was stuck or didn’t know what to do with an assignment out of fear of asking for help. I’m extremely independent and that’ll never change but through this course I’ve learned that there’s nothing wrong with asking for help when I need it. 

Mrs. B from the beginning said she would be there every step of the way to help us whenever we needed it but also we could go to the writing center. Having her there to conference with was something that helped me in the beginning stages but I get very shy when I have people I know read my work so the place that was most helpful was the writing center. I conferenced with the writing center for my papers and each time they showed me that there was no stigma in getting help.

Each time I went I felt even stronger about how much of a positive addition the writing center was to my university experience. I struggled so much with getting ideas out of my head and onto the paper for units 1 and 3 and when I met with the writing center they helped me gather my thoughts and make them actual paragraphs on paper. Getting out of my head is one of my biggest struggles as an academic and reaching out and asking for help is one of the best ways to figure out how to fix it.

This semester has shown me that it is okay to have too many ideas for how to take a paper because that shows I’m invested in my work but I can’t let having all those ideas stop me from putting out the best work I can put out. I have to ask for help when I need it and time after time, that help is the best thing for me.

The fact that I went, got help with my work and even admitted it in my blog shows me that I’ve grown as a student since the beginning of this class. I shook that fear that I might look like I don’t have everything figured out and put myself out there and that shows me that Writing 101 has benefitted me in ways four years of prep school never could.

Tags: Growth, Identity, Journey, Process

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Weekly Write 10/28

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This class has made me better in my other classes and has improved my study skills and ability to look at the truth of someone’s argument. Through this class I’ve become better at studying because I now am better at arguing because instead of immediately responding to someone’s argument I actually listen to what they have to say then I form my response to what they said. I no longer am just arguing why my side is better I can now argue why their side is wrong by listening to what they say and looking for what could be wrong on their side but I can also understand what is right about their side because I’ve actually listened to what they said.

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Weekly Write 10/7

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I cannot believe we’re already half way through the semester. Move in day and meeting my roommate seems like yesterday. The beginning of the semester had its ups and downs but it at least had more ups than downs. I’m extremely proud of myself academically. I’ve adjusted to having classes periodically during the day and during the week. I thought I would stress myself out more and not be as on top of things as I actually am. I’m really proud of my grades especially in my Italian class. I love the classes I’m in and that helps motivate me to be on top of all the work and studying I need to do. I haven’t missed anything since I’ve gotten here and I’ve become as involved as I can at the moment in the university. Socially I’ve done more than I expected of myself because I thought I would stick to the friend group that I came here with but I’ve made myself branch out and meet people and do things that put myself out there all by myself. My friends make everything better and being here with them makes everything worth while. Right now I don’t feel like I’m struggling at all. I think I’m finally into a schedule of sorts and know the swing of things and can go through the rest of the semester dealing with anything that comes my way. The only thing I’m really “figuring out” is how to reach out and ask for help when I need it but since I’ve gotten here I’ve made myself do it so that I can keep m head above the water and stay not struggling.

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Unit 1 Reflection

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This paper differed from essays that I’ve written previously in the fact that MLA updated and I had to readjust to that set up and all of my previous teachers wanted me to start my page numbers on the second page. It was more organizationally different than it was content different. I’d written synthesis essays before so I knew what I was doing and how I should be doing it, it was just a matter of how my old teacher wanted my work compared to how Mrs. B wanted it. For me writing the kernel essays were most helpful in so that when it came time to write the bigger synthesis paper I was adjusted and back in the swing of writing and writing bigger papers the way they were meant to be written. Having a partner helped me because I get really nervous when people read things that I’ve written so having a partner and having my partner be Josh who I’m friends with helped me shake some of those nerves for people reading my work. I still wouldn’t be totally comfortable with having a stranger read anything I’ve written but having someone I know helped with just getting a little bit more used to it. At my old school we never did peer review so I never had to worry about anyone besides my teacher reading what I wrote but now that I’m here I have to get over so this first partner reading was a baby step to getting comfortable with others reading what I write. I grew as an academic in this unit because I really utilized my time well so nothing was rushed or crammed. I gave myself the time I needed to make sure that I could give every aspect of the writing process the time it needed in order for it to grow and become better. I could improve for next unit by working on writing about myself. I struggle with writing about me but I could go on for days about anything or anything else. I struggle with putting things about myself into words so when writing about myself in a big essay like this one I felt like it would never become the essay I wanted because of the part about myself in it. If I had one takeaway from the last four weeks it would be that the writing center is one of the best tools available to us. What I struggle with the most in my writing is that I have so many ideas and so much information that I want to put onto the paper but no idea how to get them out and the people at the writing center understood that and helped me the most in getting where I needed to be in my writing.

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Timed Writing “Re-write Introduction”

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“I wanted all these stories to be love stories and not happy endings, sanitized love stories, but the real mess… Love is shaky, and magical, and terrifying.” 

-Sherman Alexie in BookPage

Everyone is motivated by something, whether it be love, hate or revenge but most of the time it stems from love. The heart of what we do comes from what we love. We take on these weights and embark on these journeys all for what? Why does Sherman Alexie’s Frank Snake Church, in his novel Ten Little Indians, begin basketball again after giving it up for so many years? Why does Olympic gymnast Danell Leyva pursue gymnastics even when all the odds aren’t in his favor? Similarly, why do I go to college? None of these quests are straight and narrow, they’re filled with twists and turns that make us question that love that motivates us to do them at all. Even when things are difficult and the journey looks like it’ll never end, Frank, Danell and I pursue these journeys because of the love we have for we do. The love is the similarity that bonds our journeys but our reasoning that justifies that love is what makes them different.

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Weekly Write 9/9

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What matters the most?

  1. Class
  2. Football
  3. Other sports
  4. Friends
  5. Getting involved in the McLean Institute
  6. Being Social
  7. Adulting?
  8. Freedom
  9. Supporting my friends in the things they do
  10. Intern with any sports agency
  11. Take care of myself
  12. Call home
  13. Sorority
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Weekly Write 9/2

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I think Ole Miss gets the rep of party because yes here people do like to party and we have all the resources to do it but I think Ole Miss is so much more than that. I was supposed to go to Duke University for diving. That didn’t happen because of injury and I had to restart everything when it came to college. So I started thinking of colleges and I mainly only focussed on colleges that had good sports and good marketing programs because I want to be a sports agent. But I had so many other things that came with choosing a university: good football (sports agent sorry about it), art history (my minor that I won’t give up even though everyone tells me too), beautiful campus, not too cold, good area, good people, sharks (shark conservationist #FLProbs). When I chose to go to Ole Miss the amount of backlash I got was horrible. I got told I would become dumber or redneck or a drunk and so many other horrible things. My teachers were bad, my friends were bad and some of my family were even bad. I felt horrible about all the backlash and everything but once I stepped back in rationalized everything I realized most of the hate and negativity sprouted out of ignorance. I realized that that ignorance came from the fact they have had this Ivy League crap shoved down their throat and Ivy League or Die just programed into their head so they have no idea any different. They have this stigma of anything other than what they know as bad and they fear anything that’s different and I think that’s a fault for them. I go to a school where I’m offered everything I could ever want or need where as they’re going to a school they don’t even like or their major isn’t even offered there but they’re just going there because of the Ivy League tag line. I’ve never been so happy or felt so academically free and I thank God all the time for leading me to Ole Miss because I see the unhappiness in my friends from home and think about my life and I couldn’t be more grateful.

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Kernel Essay on Eric Liu and Sherman Alexie

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Caroline Franco

Mrs. Buckley

Writ 101

25 August 2016

“Notes of a Native Speaker” by Eric Liu and “Lawyer’s League” by Sherman Alexie discuss the power of identity and the common struggle of assimilation for those who are of color. However, Eric Liu discusses his success and how assimilating means that “ he cannot gain the world without losing his soul” while Sherman Alexie discusses the hardships and thoughts that come with being a person of color in a primarily white political world.  Though they both have different outcomes to their lives and stories, their hardships shaped them and made them think about their own identity and place in the world.

Eric Liu discusses what it means to him to be white even when he technically isn’t really a white person. Eric came from immigrant parents who cared about how he turned out as a person and not as an Asian. To him, his whitness was thrust upon him but yet it was not his own conscious choice. He doesn’t understand his own identity because it is a mix of what he thinks he should be and what he has become. “Now I want desperately to see my face, to see what time has marked and what it has erased.  But I can find no mirror, except the people who surround me.  And they are mainly pale, powerful” shows that Eric Liu doesn’t see that his identity lies in who he is and not where he comes from.

Richard feels his identity is what he can do and how successful he can become as an African American and as a Native American. He doesn’t see his identity in himself but only what he can do to climb the political ladder. He turns down love because he feels as if marrying a white woman would hurt his political agenda as becoming one of the true and excellent African and Native American politicians. He gets angry at the thought of racism and takes the easy way out but he never comprehends the consequences of his actions because to him he will never be Bill Bill. “Okay, true, I broke Big Bill’s nose but he was ugly to begin with”, he will never feel the power and the immunity Big Bill has and that plagues him because being who he is he feels he will never get to the root of his identity and that is success.

Eric Liu and Sherman Alexie both make points on identity and how it is rooted in every individual. Eric Liu makes the point that he gave up his identity as an Asian man and received the power he wanted where Sherman Alexie’s character Richard tried to keep his identity as an African American and Native American but never received the power he wanted because the way other would people view him warp his view on the world. The common theme of identity shows that no matter how one lives their life they will still struggle with who they are.

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