Intro III

As you guys know, I’m a college student at my local community college. I started a few months after I graduated my high school, as I was politely informed by my family that I will be paying for my own education by myself. With that knowledge, I got a minimum wage job at McDonald’s, and worked about 20-30 hours a week while going to school full time. I am going to graduate this college this May and I am more than happy, you guys don’t even know.

As an English major, I didn’t have to take that many required English classes that were necessary for graduating. I only had to take 5 classes that actually transferred, which is kinda a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it was 5, and the rest of my classes were up to what I wanted to do. But that’s the curse: I had so much room to work with. Which classes would actually benefit me? Would I rather brush up on a skill that “could” help? Did I want to take any “fun” classes?

This question rang in my head since the last year and a half. I had full control of my future, and my leather wallet also dictated how many times I had to retake a class: 0. I passed all of my classes, (although my entry level math course I BARELY passed, as college algebra is nothing like high school statistics). I have a pretty high GPA, 3.4, and I feel very proud as my motivation for getting better was to strive to be the best, compete with my friend’s work loads (if they can do it, so can I), and the nights I would cry myself to sleep because of how stressful all of this is and that being a professor is going to be worth it.

I will say that the one thing I learned to be while being in college is to be decisive and to plan for the best, the okay, and the worst. Planning on what to do helped me out in classes, because I can adjust the effort and the potential time I need to review for classes before the event actually happened. I learned to be decisive as I didn’t have all day to waste wondering what to do, as I usually had two classes every day and then a 5-7 hour shift that goes late into the night three hours after my last class of the day. I feel like deadlines and anxiety of missing out contributed to my academic success.

If I were to recommend anyone classes that were under the subject matter I took, I would recommend taking a public speaking class, psychology, sociology, and a focused history class about an ethnic background.

Public speaking because there are very viable social cues and habits that anyone can benefit more, and since the older we are, the more we need to speak up for ourselves, there is the first step. Psychology because people are now feeling safe to seek help for their troubles.

Psychology helped me become more open and aware to the different things that life effects us mentally, and in some forms, emotionally and physically. I know that my relationship with Elizabeth was strengthen because of this class, not only because that is her major, but it’s relevant to our own personal issues.

Sociology because everyone is suffering, and we’ve been trained to not see it. Explicit and implicit ways of oppression are things that make my stomach turn. My writing has definitely been boosted because of it, and it has influenced my perception of Space. I’m fighting for everyone, all my friends and family, and for the people who’s voices have been silenced. We’re all in the same boat, no struggle is more important than the others. They are intersecting. We either fight together or fall together.

History in an ethnic perspective because I’ve learned that this nation’s narrative doesn’t focus on all of the different races when it looks back at it’s successes and fails. What about the Spanish-American war? What about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and all of its legislative looseness? What about Bacon’s Rebellion and the Stono Rebellion, where we saw African Americans fight back with violence and had to kill to make an impact, to make change? There is a lot more, and we all know that these events aren’t irrelevant, these need to be remembered.

This is a brief introduction and summary of my time at school. Sorry I went a little ham on it.

-J.E.