As I return from fall break, I feel very refreshed and motivated to continue my schoolwork. Although I was only at home for Thursday and Friday, I can pick up on the similarities of my own break experience compared to Sarah’s. Like her, it felt a little weird being at home with my parents and siblings. Not in a bad way, but I felt as if I had missed so many things going on in their lives that I needed a big debriefing session. 

Unlike Sarah however, I do know when to register and what classes I am going to take. Because I participate in ROTC, I am required to make a 4 year schedule of the classes I plan to take. This has helped me stay on track and has made registering and planning for classes much easier. After being at Longwood for around two months, not much is new and I feel like I do know the campus and the things that go on pretty well. 

When it comes to the differences with her big school experience versus a smaller school I haven’t really noticed too much. It seems as though everything is pretty much the same, just with less people. There are still always new things and activities going on throughout campus. 

I do kinda feel myself drifting a bit away from my hometown friends like Sarah does. Being away from them for so long causes both sides to miss out on all the little daily news bits that make somebody your best friend. It is kinda bittersweet to think about, as we both are moving onto different chapters in our lives. I still try my best to keep in touch with them as often as I can though. 

I honestly haven’t thought too much about the breaks that are approaching. I really enjoy it here and have a great friend group so I don’t really care to go home much. I find myself getting bored easier at home. When you live with your friends it makes it much easier to find something to do, especially on a college campus where there is always something to do or someone to hang out with.

It is interesting to see the similarities and differences that I have with Sarah. It has helped me understand that some of the things I think and feel are just common occurrences for all freshmen, making me feel better about things when I don’t think they are going well.

Sarah in the beginning months of her first semester struggled a lot and did not know how to deal with the new emotions and situations she was experiencing. I can relate to that as I did not know how to deal with this new environment at first but was able to adapt to it faster than Sarah was. She did go through a really emotional break up which caused her to be more emotional than most would be. Just like Sarah, I am very excited to be home for the upcoming holidays and breaks. Although whenever she is home, it does seem a lot sadder overall compared to when I’m home. The thought of going home makes me feel very excited and gives me something to look forward to at the end of every week. That is due to me going home every weekend. The break will be just like my weekends except it gets extended by a few more days, making it even better for me emotionally. There are many differences between me and Sarah as she is a really artsy person, and I am very uncreative artistically. I would hate to go to a university like she is. She goes to Minnesota and I know that university has a lot more students than Longwood does. That fact alone makes me feel sorry for Sarah as that probably adds to the stress of her situation. I know I would hate to go to a university any bigger than Longwood since the freshman class is four times bigger than my graduating class in my high school. That does make me feel very out of my comfort zone as I’m not used to there being so many people, but I know it will be good for me in the end. Sarah’s experiences have both similarities and differences to my own personal experiences.

Sarah seems to be struggling a bit with finding herself and who she is. She tries to know more about herself by changing her looks and her diet. Not only does she struggle with that but also with how she views herself since her roommate is so overachieving she feels lower than her. She does not let things like this keep her down though, though she does not feel as comfortable making new bonds with people at first, as the semester progresses, she makes more relationships. I relate to that because even though it has only been one month that I have been here, I already made 2 friends which to me is great! I do not necessarily need to find myself, but I also plan on dyeing my hair next week. I feel that we are both stressed over the workload that college gives us, I would prefer to be in class for hours than to have to do things on my own after class. I do feel for her having such negative feelings with her roommate since I do not have those feelings with mine, I think we all put in the work that we do, and we are all different so we should not compare ourselves to each other or anyone in general. I am extremely excited for the holidays, I already go home every weekend, so I do not feel any negativity towards it. I feel more dread towards coming back, I know college is not that hard and it can be enjoyable sometimes, but it honestly feels energy draining, I do try to make the most of it though. I think that larger university students have less opportunities to have one on ones with their professors and it would be harder to make friends, while at a smaller university at some point you have a good chance of knowing a lot of people there and making great relationships with your professors.

My experiences compare with those of Sarah’s in the sense that I out myself out there and attended social events which ultimately led to joining clubs. I compare myself similarly with Sarah’s hangouts with friends as she is always with someone close to her. I find myself more inclined to be with my friends than on my own, which aided in the attendance of social events as I made numerous friendships and communicated with others. I also struggled finding out how to register for classes, as described on page 141, which led to difficulty in receiving the classes I truly wanted. I have a hard time with electronics and I believe Sarah was similar to me in this way.

As the holidays near, I find myself excited and sad at the same time. I love being here at Longwood and spending time with my friends that I have made throughout the semester. I am scared of the class changes, I truly love all of my classes this semester and I can’t seem to find myself changing them. On the other hand, I am extremely excited to go back to my hometown and see my friends and family there. I absolutely love my family and being able to spend a good amount of time with them will heal my soul in a way. I miss going out places in my hometown, which I will be able to revisit once the holidays near. I will definitely feel weird returning to college after getting used to my hometown again, but it is not something I haven’t experienced before and so I believe it will be much simpler.

A larger University compared to Longwood would cause me lots of distress. I believe I would not be able to find my way around the campus and get acclimated to my surroundings easily. This small campus really gives me the feeling of home, even if there is not much to do. I understand how Sarah feels as she is always with her friends and I find that the smaller campus life makes me closer to my friends as it does for her. I appreciate the simple and quiet setting, making it better for me school wise.

Sarah seems to be doing slightly better with classes. I have adjusted to all my classes pretty well I still feel challenged in class but my professors are very helpful. Sarah is also currently dealing with a break up. She went through a major identity crisis after her boyfriend broke up with her. I have not gone through anything drastic like she did. The only thing that is making me feel the way she does is all of my schoolwork. Sarah has started going out with her friends and attending activities. She went camping with her roommate Liz and had a good time. I have been going to do stuff with my friends, although we haven’t gone camping, we have gone to the Twin Lakes.

When Sarah leaves for home I think she feels slightly relieved but also stressed because of Ben. When she gets home she gets to see her friends. She is beyond excited but then she gets bad news that Ben would to be moving to New York in the summer, which was sooner than expected. If I were her I would’ve felt the same way she did, disappointed. For the most part her Thanksgiving break seemed good. Although, Ben did make an appearance and she made the situation quite awkward. I can relate to Sarah is this situation, it is always so nerve racking seeing your ex after the breakup. Unlike Sarah, I am so excited to go home for break. I miss my family and friends so much. Thankfully I don’t have to run into any ex-boyfriend over break. Sarah was quite sad to leave her hometown. I think it might also be hard for me to come back after break because I miss having my own space.

I feel like Sarah’s college experience is quite different from mine. She seems slightly introverted; I am the complete opposite. I love going out with my friends on the weekend and I enjoy meeting new people. Sarah has a few friends but she seems to stay in her small group. I think Sarah’s experience at a larger campus has lots of differences in comparison to Longwood. At Longwood, it is quite easy to make friends because you tend to see a lot of the same people in the same day. In comparison, larger universities, like Sarah’s, it isn’t as common to see the same people because there are lots of students and the classes are bigger. I think Sarah would thrive at a place like Longwood because it would give her an opportunity to become more involved and become more social.

It is a crazy feeling to know that I’ve already been in college for five weeks, the time here has truly flung bye. I think back to a few months ago when I was dreading coming to school, knowing that I had a challenging course load I didn’t know if I was ready or prepared to even start this new chapter of my life. The past few weeks I have grown more as a person and learned more about myself than in my entire life. I’ve learned that although my classes are challenging I am capable of pursuing this career. I can see myself in the personable future using all the knowledge I have learned so far. Whether it be from building my knowledge and understanding in learning a new language or using what I’ve learned about research in our past annotated bibliography. Before Longwood I had barely done any sort of research when it came to the APA formatting. I was able to learn many things using the greenwood library to help find good and reliable sources I could count on in my essay. With the assignment I now feel way more comfortable when it comes to finding sources and being able to narrow down the difference between a good and bad source. By reading the Understanding Rhetoric book I’m also confident in defining what a good primary and secondary sources are. I still think that I could use some work on paraphrasing, I’m not 100% confident on whether or not I am doing it correctly or not. That is one thing I believe would be beneficial is for me to look more in depth about ways to paraphrase without plagiarizing. Over these weeks I’m proud to have grown my knowledge in research and be able to apply it to nursing assignments in the future.