Graduation 2018: The Most Important Lessons I've Learned
So it has officially been a full week since I have graduated from college and wow what a feeling. For the past few years, I complained a lot about Fairfield University. In fact, I wanted to transfer out almost every single year. However, if I am being honest, I don't regret going there. Now that I'm done, I can look back and realize that Fairfield did me a lot of good. I had amazing experiences, met some incredible people, and learned a lot about myself. Sure the work caused me a great deal of stress, and the general campus environment left much to be desired, but I think I left college a better person.
When I first went to college, I was a girl with little to no confidence. I remember talking to my mom before I left for freshman year saying that I was just going to go to school to do work and focus. No fun for me whatsoever. I was convinced that I would not make any friends and I went in thinking that I would be miserable. It was a get in and get out mentality, but that definitely was not the right mind-frame to go in with. I was entirely too pessimistic about the whole situation, which is why I think it took a long time (almost all four years) to finally allow myself to have fun because I just thought of college as pure work and nothing else. I have issues with relaxing and always feel so guilty when I'm not doing work (an issue I still struggle with), and it wasn't until the very end of college when I decided to take more breaks and hang out with friends. I felt guilty about it at the moment, and yet I got all A's in all of my classes. It made me realize how my perfectionist mindset can make it hard for me to relax and have fun.
Something that college afforded me was a lesson about myself at my core. I have spoken about this before, and those who know me know the story well, but I, the atheist, decided to do the 10-week Ignatian Encounter during my junior year at Fairfield. If you would have told me that I would be a participant of a 10-week religious exploration program prior, I would have thought you were crazy, but I did it nonetheless, and I am so thankful that I did. Coming back to school three weeks after my brother died was a tough thing to do, and I was also at a point when I was really unhappy at school for a number of reasons. However, after attending weekly sessions with a spiritual guide and having to sit in complete silence for 20 minutes every single day to reflect, I started to learn more about myself and my current situation in life. I came out of the program with the knowledge that I am inherently a hopeful person. This is to say that even when things are rough or it seems like everything is horrible or bad, I still wake up every morning striving to do my best. I have an inner belief that everything will work out OK, and while everything might suck in the meantime, I have hope that eventually things will get better. It took 10 weeks for me to figure that part of myself out, and because of the program, I have a greater understanding of who I am as a person moving forward in my life.
Additionally, when I think about how I have changed from high school to now, I see how much more confidence I have. I used to be much more shy, introverted, and I hated giving presentations. However, as a communication major, I came to discover a love for public speaking I never knew I had. Now I love speaking before crowds and I have become much more extroverted. College forces you out of your comfort zone because you have to meet all sorts of new people and experience entirely new things on a daily basis, and the only way people are going to get to know you is if you put yourself out there and open yourself up to the world. The whole college experience taught me how to be social and interact with a variety of different personalities. Social skills are extremely important, especially in a world that is relying more and more on technology to communicate, so I am thankful to have gained the skills I have from my college experience.
Lastly, as I was cleaning out my room the other day, I found an envelope filled with notes from every retreat that I had been on in the past three years. Since I was a member of the Loyola Residential College as a sophomore and was an alumni mentor for that residential hall for the past two years, I went on quite a lot of retreats as a part of the program. During these retreats, there would be paper bags with everyone's names on it so that people could drop notes of appreciation to one another in their bags. When I found the envelope filled with these notes, I was going through each and every one and I started to notice a trend. So many people told me how much of a positive force I was in their lives. They said that I made their day, or always made them smile and laugh anytime that I was around. Now, I personally would never consider myself to be a positive person, if anything I think I'm more of a pessimist/realist, so it is incredible to read that so many people view me as a source of positivity. I guess I just never think about how I impact other people, so I am very thankful for those notes because it shows me another side of myself that I would not have been able to tell on my own.
I might have complained a great deal about college over the last four years, but I also have so much to be thankful for. Whether or not I feel the formal education I received was worth the hefty price tag is one thing, but the education I got about myself is an entirely other topic. I have grown as a person and come out of college a much more mature and confident woman. I would have never learned as much as I did about myself if it were not for the experiences college afforded me. The stress of it all took years off my life, but at least now I can go forth with a greater understanding of what makes me, me!
Stina :)