What I learned from the freshman year ... of life

When I graduated high school in June 2000, I was ready to go to college — or at least I thought I was. I was ready for something new and exciting. I moved to Austin, Texas, with only $374 and a strong will never to return home unless I was visiting. It seemed simple: find a roommate, get a job and enroll in school.

I found a roommate, someone I went to high school with who was one of my best friends. Turns out people aren’t the same after you live together. (Same goes for relationships, but that’s another article.) There always seemed to be some sort of catastrophic event – you ate some of my cereal, you drank some of my milk. The small arguments turned into resentment for the other; suddenly the friendship became a lesson.

The job search has always been easy for me. The lesson in work ethic that I gained throughout high school actually added value to my real-world experience. Imagine that.

Enrolling in school was easy, but knowing that college didn’t have mandatory attendance made it easy to sleep in after a long nights’ work. I didn’t really appreciate college until my late 20s. Years of commitment to the same job was the ticket to my maturity and academic success. I was told that school would give me the tools in order to become successful at work, but I have only benefitted from this lesson in reverse. Having jobs that I didn’t enjoy very much gave me the motivation and desire to make something more of myself, a lesson I will forever be grateful for.

Your freshman year of anything will always be full of lessons. It’s important to welcome the mistakes and learn from them. You will fail tests and relationships and that’s okay; it’s what’s going to make the rest of your experiences worthwhile!

— Sandra de Arrigunaga

Four Crossed Logs intern

professional communication major