First Graduate

This post is part of an ongoing series of blog entries by Anjie D (FG3), a freshman at Barnard College writing about her college experiences on the blog Uptown Girl. Here's an excerpt of her latest musings.

I have been awakened.

I had been thinking about dropping my Spanish class (gasp!) and met with my professor, who referred me to someone in the Spanish department. In this meeting, not only did I get good advice about how to get my work done for the class more efficiently, but even more importantly I realized that help actually exists out there in the advanced-academics world. I may even be able to get a tutor to help with the challenges I have with grammar and with whom I can practice speaking (besides the Spanish speakers in my suite, who have their own lives to worry about).

I learned that not only personal effort leads to success; help is out there, and it can be useful to me. This awakening, this revelation, has inspired me to reach out to my other professors, as well. I'm going to track down my Harlem Renaissance Lit professor's office hours and actually attend them. If problems with my Urban Sociology assignment come up, the first thing I'll do is reach out to my professor instead of struggling around for a solution myself. I already know I am resourceful and self-sufficient, but I have finally learned that not all situations require utilizing that self-sufficiency. Sometimes, it's time to reach out to others.

I miss the first couple of weeks of classes. The workload was heavy but it was still possible to see the light at the end of the tunnel (a tunnel constructed of readings and worksheets). Now that classes are in full swing and, presumably, professors are beginning to worry about sticking to their own ambitious agendas for their classes, every class seems to require twice the amount of work it used to. It's harder now to stay on top of everything. Five classes-this is tough stuff!

But at least for today, thinking about Spanish is keeping me a step above despair. See, my meeting in Casa Hispanica occurred before I had my Spanish class. For some reason, the meeting led to this buoyant sense of confidence in class that I had been lacking. Instead of feeling like every single word I say in class is wrong, like I usually do, I felt I had made smarter mistakes-as if I was actually making sense for the first time even if I wasn't getting everything perfect. Furthermore, instead of taking the other students' words as pure truth and something I should try to imitate, I started noticing the mistakes the other students were making in small-group discussions. They have holes in their learning, too. Noticing this allows me to start getting past my insecurity, which is exactly what I plan to do. Maybe next time I will even volunteer to say something in front of the whole class.

Either way, I know that with a little help-I'll be alright.