The thought of reviewing my entire freshman year of college completely overwhelms me. I write this in June, and summing up the past ten months seems next to impossible. I don't know where to begin.
Luckily, the University Honors Program guidelines for the task includes questions designed to evoke meaningful reflection. For freshman year, my Year in Review will be a sort of interview (with myself), using questions provided by UHP to gather my thoughts in a somewhat organized fashion.
To provide some background first, I'll lay out the basics. I started my freshman year as an Urban Planning student in UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Now, I'm studying Health Sciences with a concentration in Exercise and Movement Science in the College of Allied Health Sciences. I plan on attending graduate school to earn my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in order to become a physical therapist. I believe these changes mark not only academic growth, but personal growth as well. I hope the following questions give a bit of insight into my thought process while making these major decisions, as well as successfully review my freshman year.
What is the most significant event, experience, or challenge you overcame this year and what did you learn from this experience? How is this experience influential in terms of how you see yourself today? The most significant challenge I overcame this year was changing my major. When trying to decide what I wanted to study in college, I had a wide variety of interests to choose to pursue. However, I was unsure which interests I should pursue for the rest of my life. I decided on urban planning because it was something that sounded interesting, although I had never directly dealt with the subject before. My first semester started off well, I enjoyed and excelled in the classes.
However, as time went on, planning felt like less of a match for me as I learned how involved it is with fields like politics, economics, and real estate (topics I had little interest in dealing with on a day-to-day basis for the rest of my life). In one of my classes, planners came in and talked about their experiences working in the field. Although this was meant to excite us about becoming a planner, it had the opposite effect on me. I started to panic.
The field I was so confident in before might not actually have been the right fit for me. I thought about staying in planning another semester to see if it got better, but then if I ended up still disliking it and switching out, I'd be an entire year behind! What if planning is the right path for me, but if I drop out too early I wouldn't realize it? These questions haunted me as first semester came to an end. I planned to make the decision whether to switch out or stay in planning over winter break.
I started thinking about physical therapy around the same time I was questioning planning. PT combines many things I had desired out of a career: directly working with the people I would be helping, making a positive impact on people's lives, a job in which I wouldn't be sitting and staring at a computer for 8 hours, an advancing field in which there is much to learn throughout one's career, etc. Over winter break I talked to two PT's over the phone, and shadowed two more for a couple of hours as well. I also shadowed two planners. By the end of the break, I was leaning more towards physical therapy by far, although I wasn't 100% confident. After discussing it with friends and family, I decided to make the switch.
After making my decision, I questioned it heavily. Never before had I felt like one of my decisions would change the course of my life as much as this one would. I put so much pressure on myself. At 19, it felt like I was determining whether I would be happy or not for the rest of my life. These thoughts prevented me from truly enjoying the present, as I was always thinking about my life down the line. Although I was doing fine in my classes during the beginning of spring semester, I still worried that I made an irreversible mistake.
Gradually, I became more confident in my decision as I talked to more people about how I was feeling. Now, in June, after more than 50 hours of shadowing and volunteering with physical therapists, I am certain that PT is the right path for me.
I've learned a lot from the experience of changing my major. I distinguished my lifelong passions from my casual curiosities, I discovered my true academic interests, and I prioritized what I truly want out of a career. Outside of my academics and future career, I learned how to deal with personal doubt and depressing thoughts. I learned where I get my happiness from (spending time with people I love, enjoying the outdoors and nature, helping others, exercising, etc.) and to keep that in mind during bad days. I learned I am more dependent on others for happiness than I probably should be. Although it has been said many times, I learned how to live in the moment. During my struggles, I thought only of the future and not the present. I kept worrying if I would be happy in the future, instead of if I was happy now. The present is all we have, so if we aren't living in the present, are we truly living?
Most importantly, I learned how lucky I am to have a good support system and how important it is to have one when going through a difficult situation. It would have been much more difficult to go through the entire process without my family, my friends from Sycamore, and my friends from UC. I learned that the most important things in life aren't things, but people.
This experience was extremely influential in terms of how I see myself today. I am more aware of what causes me to feel confident, depressed, happy, motivated, etc. I am living in the moment, appreciating the experiences and people in my life now more than ever. I'm more confident in my career choice. I'm also comforted by advice a friend gave me: Your gpa, major, and job doesn't define you. Even if your gpa isn't perfect, you're frustrated with your major, or unsatisfied with your job, you still deserve happiness.
What's one thing you would change about this year? If I could change one thing about this year, I would have made more connections with UC organizations and clubs, and faculty. I feel as though at the beginning of the school year I was so overwhelmed by the multitude of clubs UC had to offer. I had trouble keeping up with all of the organizations I was interested in, and ended up missing important meetings and events. I think I was interested in too many and therefore couldn't keep track of all of them. Therefore, I missed out on organizations that really interested me. I also wished that I cultivated stronger relationships with my professors. Although I introduced myself to a handful at the beginning of the semester, I didn't continue to ask questions and discuss relevant information with them, and I missed out on knowing more about them academically and personally.
What is at least one goal that you have set for yourself for the upcoming year? Some of my goals that I have set myself for the upcoming year are as follows:
Focus on clubs that I am most passionate about (i.e. UC Feminists, and Leaders for Environmental Awareness and Protection [LEAP, of which I will be the Secretary]) while joining organizations more related to my major
Cultivate stronger connections with my professors and other UC faculty
Maintain high academic standards and work hard to meet those standards in order to be competitive for grad school
Take care of myself (eat in the healthiest and most nourishing way possible, get a good amount of sleep each night, exercise daily and in a pain-free manner)
Get some observation hours in in a setting other than outpatient physical therapy
Give back (volunteer weekly with people and at a place I care about)
Your thoughts about who you are and what you want to do have clearly changed and evolved this year, as illustrated by your answer to the first question. How will that inform your next steps? My next steps are informed by my decision to continue on the PT route. I need to maintain a high science and overall gpa. I need to observe PTs for several hours in a wide variety of settings. I'm hoping to shadow at a place close to campus, in an environment different than outpatient. These hours are not only helpful for getting into grad school, but I will learn more about physical therapy through the advice of other PTs and through real world experience. Hopefully, these observation hours will help me to make sure that PT is what I want to go into. I'm also hoping to volunteer in a field related to PT (either at Little Sisters of the Poor, like I did second semester, or a nearby hospital). In addition, I want to join more organizations related to Health Sciences and physical therapy (i.e. HealthCats).
What piece of advice would you like to give yourself as you prepare for the upcoming year, personally and academically? Preparing for the upcoming year, I'd like to tell myself the following: "Always be kind, help as many people as you can, no matter how small or big it may be. But also don't forget to be kind and help yourself first."