Looking Back on The First Year
Allie McCormick
Issue date: 5/14/09 Section: Opinions
Three days ago, long after I handed in my final paper and packed my belongings in preparation for my summer at home, I suddenly realized that my first year at Smith was over. Of course, I had known for some time that the year was ending, since classes had ended and students had already begun to disappear from campus, but the fact that the first year of my college experience was over took a while to sink in.
As I sit here, trying to figure out how to capture the moments, events and experiences of an entire year in a few hundred words, I am flooded by a wave of memories. It seems impossible that the handful of thoughts bouncing around in my mind is all that I have left of this year. Will these select, seemingly random memories be the experiences of my collegiate beginning that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my life?
The first day of orientation, I was filled with a paralyzing mixture of fear and excitement that made the experience one of the best and worst of my life. Even as I unpacked my bags and toured the campus with my family, I was constantly aware of the significance of that day and what the moment would mean to me through the rest of my life. Although my parents eventually departed, leaving me standing enchanted and bewildered on the front stairs of my new home, the feelings of nausea, excitement, hope and dread lingered behind for months.
Looking back, August feels both years and days away. Is it really possible that the friends whom I hold so dear today were nameless, faceless strangers this time a year ago? Virtually every memory from this past year contains the amazing women I now think of as part of my family, and in that way it feels as if I have always known them.
Obviously, not all memories are happy ones: the first time a professor was less than impressed with my work, for example. I know that this is a fairly common experience for a first-year college student, but his comment that my writing was comprised of "moments of greatness that were dashed upon the rocks of disappointment," seemed - and a semester later continues to seem - unnecessarily harsh. There was the morning I cried for no reason, the day I couldn't be there to support my best friend through a personal crisis and the week a spell of homesickness almost got the better of me. The pain of those moments, however, has faded, and I can now see that my triumph over such obstacles has made me a stronger person.
My greatest fear going into my first year at Smith was not the potentiality of having no friends, of failing a class or even of having a terrible roommate. Above all else, I was terrified at the notion that my life would change in unforeseeable, uncontrollable and irreversible ways in the coming months. It seems quite unfair and even cruel that someone who spent so much of her time fearing change now regrets not having made the most of each moment.
From my very first day on campus, I have had high expectations for my first year experience, perhaps unrealistically so. Looking back, I recognize that in order to be where I am now, eagerly awaiting my return to campus next fall, I had to endure the many ups and downs of the tumultuous, often hectic but always exciting beginning to what I hope will be an amazing four years.
As I sit here, trying to figure out how to capture the moments, events and experiences of an entire year in a few hundred words, I am flooded by a wave of memories. It seems impossible that the handful of thoughts bouncing around in my mind is all that I have left of this year. Will these select, seemingly random memories be the experiences of my collegiate beginning that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my life?
The first day of orientation, I was filled with a paralyzing mixture of fear and excitement that made the experience one of the best and worst of my life. Even as I unpacked my bags and toured the campus with my family, I was constantly aware of the significance of that day and what the moment would mean to me through the rest of my life. Although my parents eventually departed, leaving me standing enchanted and bewildered on the front stairs of my new home, the feelings of nausea, excitement, hope and dread lingered behind for months.
Looking back, August feels both years and days away. Is it really possible that the friends whom I hold so dear today were nameless, faceless strangers this time a year ago? Virtually every memory from this past year contains the amazing women I now think of as part of my family, and in that way it feels as if I have always known them.
Obviously, not all memories are happy ones: the first time a professor was less than impressed with my work, for example. I know that this is a fairly common experience for a first-year college student, but his comment that my writing was comprised of "moments of greatness that were dashed upon the rocks of disappointment," seemed - and a semester later continues to seem - unnecessarily harsh. There was the morning I cried for no reason, the day I couldn't be there to support my best friend through a personal crisis and the week a spell of homesickness almost got the better of me. The pain of those moments, however, has faded, and I can now see that my triumph over such obstacles has made me a stronger person.
My greatest fear going into my first year at Smith was not the potentiality of having no friends, of failing a class or even of having a terrible roommate. Above all else, I was terrified at the notion that my life would change in unforeseeable, uncontrollable and irreversible ways in the coming months. It seems quite unfair and even cruel that someone who spent so much of her time fearing change now regrets not having made the most of each moment.
From my very first day on campus, I have had high expectations for my first year experience, perhaps unrealistically so. Looking back, I recognize that in order to be where I am now, eagerly awaiting my return to campus next fall, I had to endure the many ups and downs of the tumultuous, often hectic but always exciting beginning to what I hope will be an amazing four years.
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