Artifact - Small Fish in a Big Pond

For most of my life, I have been the big fish in the small pond, easily acing all of my classes and excelling academically. Going into college, people told me that it "wasn't like high school", and how college was a whole different beast, but then again, that's what they told me when I was graduating from middle school, so I was naturally complacent.

This Summer I decided that I wanted to get a head start on my classes, so I enrolled in CSE 143 during Summer quarter. While I enjoyed the class and learned a lot from it, I never really put myself into the “college mindset”. I took the class like I was in high school, expecting that I would be able to cruise through the class with relative ease. I was unprepared, and I struggled to keep up with the rapid pace of the class, never really grasping the material. However, I am somewhat grateful that this happened. It served as a “wake-up call”, and it stated clearly what people had told me so many times – college is not like high school.

I began to make changes, but the years of cruising through high school classes had established habits that were extremely hard to break. In the first week of Autumn quarter, I missed a simple participation assignment because I just forgot that it was even due. I began to use a planner, a tool which I found to be incredibly helpful to better manage my time and keep on top of my assignments. The satisfaction of finishing an assignment and checking it off was also an added bonus. Nevertheless, I continue to make mistakes and have still missed at least one other deadline. But I am confident that as long as I continue to actively recognize these mistakes and take steps to prevent them from happening again in the future, I will be much more well equipped to succeed on this new journey of mine.