During your first year at college, your relationship with your family will change. Although your parents are probably paying some, if not all, of your expenses, making you financially dependent, you now live away from your family home. You are now independent in many ways.
Trapped as I was with the organization of clothes, bedcovers, online banking, and emotions during the weeks preceding the freshman pre-orientation trips, I was in no mood to listen to my mom's seemingly dire predictions. "I don't want to worry you," she began, as we sorted through boxes of band-aids, "but it takes about six weeks to fully adjust to college life.
During the course of their junior year, many Muhlenberg students decide to study abroad and leave campus for a semester. As a Muhlenberg senior, I have many friends that left for a semester to see the world and travel to places they have never been. Most people that I talk to tell me that their study abroad was unbelievable and one of the most important things they have done with their lives- and I'm happy for them.
When The Weekly staff asked me to share my thoughts on the changes I observed in students from first-year seminar to senior year, a film-like memory loop of seminar students and advisees played in my mind. Faces and events piled up after ten years of teaching first-year seminars, and I wondered how I, often an outside observer, could categorize and analyze the array of wonderfully unique students that I have known at Muhlenberg.
Where do I see myself in four years? That's a difficult question, considering I barely can see where I'll eat tonight (Garden Room, GQ, Sandella's… the possibilities are endless). I can only hope I'll still be on track to pursue my dreams of becoming an orthopedic surgeon.