thoughts
lessons
Looking back at this past year, and the six years that I have been in college, I've been a first-hand witness to an amazing transformation.
When I came to this university, I was very much an introvert. I was naive to much of the ways of the world. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it at a major university. I was scared.
I don't know just how much people back home realized that. I might have come across as pretty confident. Inside, I knew that people scared me because I didn't feel that I measured up to them.
Freshman year was the nudge out of the nest. I went home often, but gradually I started spending more of my weekends up at the university. I learned that there were so many more viewpoints about so many more agendas than I could have possibly comprehended back in my hometown.
Sophomore year, I truly spread my wings to fly. This was the first time I really got active in something. I got to experience things that I had never done before. Looking back, I see that not having a choir or a real church youth group that did things during my youth was kind of sad. I would have really enjoyed that. But not having that resulted in my approaching these new opportunities wide-eyed and really wanting to participate. I think that that helped. I met my best friend during this year, and it was this year that I started revealing a little more about myself to other people.
My junior year was perhaps the most eye-opening of my four undergraduate years, because of the lessons I was taught about people and relationships. I wrote back then that people are unpredictable sometimes. I wrote this from a the vantage point of someone who hadn't been hurt yet by the very person that he wrote it about. When that happened, it reinforced the point in a way that I had not expected. As a result of this unfortunate situation, I also learned that you will meet people who are only looking out for themselves, and that they do not care about the ones that they hurt along the way. This was the time that I realized my naivete in giving all people my full trust at the beginning of a relationship. I have learned that while most people are still good, one must guard one's heart a little more closely than I was doing.
My senior year taught me that sometimes even being right isn't enough and that sometimes you are just a number (the 2-Plus Plan incident). I learned that people will talk about you, no matter what you do. It doesn't matter whether they like you or not. The only way that you won't eventually become a topic of conversation is if people honestly don't care about you one way or the other. I learned that I had to take on the persona of a grown man, with all their thoughts, actions, and attitudes. I was reminded that these should reflect Christ always.
The first year of the MBA Program taught me a lot of things, many of which are expounded upon in that year's parting shots. But to name a few: working on extroversion, an insight into the different facets of problem solving, and time management. I learned especially about how to make time for important things and people.
And what about this year?