Personal Narrative: What I Learned In College

The first half of this semester was swift and I can’t believe how fast it passed by. College is a whole new world for me that I had never imagined with a lot of new experiences that I hope will shift me into a better and smarter person. There are more things I can do in college that I would have never dared to do in high school and I am happy for these new freedoms. I am able to eat in class, leave class without asking and they don’t care if I pay attention or not. My high school teachers would always tell me to wait for the bell, sometimes would not let me leave and if I did not pay attention they would yell. However, I still feel trapped due to the immense academic stress. Academic stress is the worst as it defeats the “freedom”

My math midterm is in just two days which bothers me more than anything because I doubt I’m ready for it. It’s hard to juggle all my classes because of the mental strain they put on me. I sometimes feel there is no time for fun. I don’t like being an ‘adult’. I find myself yelling at myself in replacement of the teachers that yelled at me in high school. The yelling only seems to stress me out. However I find that when I cheer myself on and self-teach myself the material thoroughly I do much better. I know I am capable of a lot more than I do at times. The best motivation for me is to think of how Albert Einstein taught himself calculus even though he was expelled from school at age fifteen. When I cheer myself on rather than beat myself up I feel I can do much more. When college had started I cheered myself on but now it’s gone to me beating myself up. I realize that I’m my own enemy when it comes to college but I also am getting the idea that they want students to fail the course. Math class online is ridiculous to me because if you forget a comma or make a typo on a quiz it marks it wrong even if the answer is right. It’s not just that I have to teach myself everything it’s also that the grading sometimes is not right. I feel it’s not justice but obviously they would want students to fail so they would have to retake classes and pay more. My father had even said “It’s like they punish college students with the workload”. My sculpture teacher assigns projects like it’s nothing, and math class requires over a hundred problems a week plus the study plan to unlock the