Going through some of the boxes brought back from Baltimore, Montreal and Libreville, I have found a ton of things I thought were lost. Among those things were my autograph pages from my senior year in high school. Reading the comments my friends wrote made me realize that going into college, I became what I had hoped never to become: I became a jerk.
Why this conclusion? Simple, reading most of the comments left by my friends, I was told not to change and to always treat people right, especially one person in particular: my ex. I became a jerk by trying to conform to the idea that college life was to be a huge party filled with out of control behavior. I must say, my freshman year was a joke and possibly a complete failure as I distanced myself from the people I should have stayed close to and embarked in out of control behavior that greatly impacted my grades, and my standing with the administration. Going into my sophomore year, however, I did try to make things right and salvage what was left of my GPA. Of course, the rest of my college life was filled with partying and studying, but I surrounded myself with the right people, made friendships that have lasted through good and bad and eventually was regarded as a leader by my peers.
I guess to better myself, I had to go through that experience of losing important friendships, partake in behaviors that got me reprimanded by the school (i.e. talking to Dr Seymour about late partying in the girls’ part of Copeland Hall)and see my grades hit hard by my lack of concentration. While I got away with some of the out of control behavior my freshman year, I do wish I had not turned into a jerk driven by the idea of a college experience fished out of movies like American Pie, Van Wilder or other similar movies. I should have done more to keep the relationships and friendships I cultivated in high school.
I, now, have gained more friendships and relationships than I could have hoped for and the people in my life all have played an important part to get me where I am now. I have also grown a great deal and continuing doing so every day through new experiences and cultivating new relationships with the many people I meet and who teach me new things.
