A reflection: Lessons learned

So I just recently got home (that is, back to Portland) after finishing all my finals for Spring Term 2009 at the University of Oregon. It's an extremely weird feeling, being officially done with 2 full years of college. (Side note: I just realized that I can no longer say "last year" to refer to my freshman year, as technically, sophomore year is now "last year." Bummer. I feel old). It really does feel like yesterday that we were graduating high school, and on this Saturday I'm trekking to Corvalis to watch my brother graduate from college. Every time I reach the end of a school year, calendar year, sport season, or essentially the end of any other long-term event, I always start thinking about what has happened over that time, things that have changed, and things that haven't changed, among many others. When reminiscing, I think one of the most important things to do is to realize the lessons that one has learned. Thus, for the first segment tonight...

Lessons Learned, September 2008 - June 2009.

• Community college classes are a lot of fun. There's a huge diversity of people and opinion's which make for great discussions. However there are also plenty of people who are not used to being in a classroom, which can cause difficulties. The instructors are all allowed to teach how they want to teach. This spurred my interest and kept me way more focused in class, as I was able to see the teacher and in what ways they were passionate about the subject. Out of all of my instructors this year, I feel I learned the most from my ones at Lane Community College.
• Large university classes are more difficult for me. I learn much better and am more engaged in a class if I feel like I personally know the teacher on some level. It is much more difficult to achieve this when your teacher has 399 other students in the same class. Although still possible to get to know these teachers well, they still see way more students and simply cannot be as invested in one student as a different teacher who has only 30 students in their class (for example, at Lane CC or the University of Redlands).
• Visiting instructor's office hours is extremely helpful. This is one I wish I had actually learned earlier on. I was told from the beginning to go talk to my teachers, but sort of brushed this advice away. On the first day in most of my classes, I approached my instructor and asked them "What can I do to get the most out of this class? Where else can I find information pertaining to what we discuss, so I can give it a more real-world application?" The instructor's whose office hours I visited the most were one's who had excellent answers to this question.
• The garbage and recycling do not take themselves out, no matter the circumstances. You would think that we would be very proactive at taking the trash out, due to the fact that the dumpster is literally 25 feet from our front door. This is not the case. It doesn't seem to matter where you live or with who, but the garbage and the trash are always an issue in the house while in college. Maybe this applies to living anywhere, forever? I guess we'll see.
• At a big school, it's harder to meet people. Contrary to what many might think, I personally found it much harder to meet new people at a large school (U of O - 21,500 students) compared to a small school (U of R - 2,000 students). I feel this is the result of the general attitude on such a big campus, and that attitude is more one of "mine your own business, there's 20,000 other people you could be talking to," whereas at a small school, the attitude was much more of a community idea. I finally found a way around this obstacle by, of all things, joining a fraternity.
• Joining a fraternity (or other social group) was an excellent experience, unlike anything I could have imagined. See previous post for description of the fraternity.
• Studying a little bit for each class, every day, will save HOURS and HOURS of late night studying/cramming right before the final. This is a lesson I seem to learn every single term, which always leads into me starting off the term really well with good study habits. The first four weeks of this spring term, I spent at least 15 minutes on each class, every single day, simply looking over the notes that we had covered so far. One of the best ways to learn something is to just think about it a lot of times, so seeing lecture slides every day kept me fresh and on top of everything. It was very beneficial, but then I stopped doing it and ended up almost pulling two all-nighters during finals week to cram. Hopefully I'll actually retain this lesson for more than 5 weeks next time.

Well that's all that I can think of as of now. As I remember more of them (or rather, am confronted by similar situations and have to call upon the lesson) I will try to post them on here. There are plenty. My hope is that this entire summer can act as a sort of reflection period for me, and really give me a chance to look at my life, what I've done, what I haven't done, and what I want to do. I have a lot of thinking about what happens next. I'll be turning 21 in the fall, beginning my 3rd year of college, entering into a lot of upper-division courses, and possibly running for a position on the executive board of the fraternity later in the year. Lots on my plate. SO--Again thats part of the point of this blog. In lieu of that, I'd like to conclude this post with something from a hiking trip I took a few years ago. It may be familiar to you as well, either because you have done the same, or something similar, as there are many variations. I hope to continue this tradition throughout all of the rest of my posts on here.

Thus begins, "Thorns and Roses." Thorns and roses is something we did every night before bed during our hiking trip, and I have seen it repeated in other forms at other campouts through the years (other events too...but it seems to come out most often while doing outdoorsy-things). Its used to give a brief sum-up of the day, and you usually go around the group and each person says their thorn, their rose, and typically a bud as well. Thorn - Your "thorn" for the day, something that didn't go well, that upset you, or didn't turn out how you wanted. Rose - Your "rose" for the day, something that went well, you were happy about, something you accomplished. Bud - Your "bud" for tomorrow, what you are looking forward to for the next day, whatever it may be. So here goes!

Thorn - Finding out that I only got a 64/100 on my Accounting final which I took on Wednesday.

Rose - Getting all of my unpacking done from school, there was a ton of stuff.

Bud - Getting to go to my brother's graduation tomorrow, getting to pack/get extra excited for leaving for London!

AT out.