As I embark on my final week of classes, with last ever finals week to follow, I have reflected on my time here at Cleveland State University. I have taken many different classes with many different teachers using many different teaching methods. From the dullest forms of the Socratic methods, to energetic, unconventional methods, I feel like I have seen it all in the classroom. What began to interest me, even more, are the things that I have learned outside of the classroom. The kinds of things that you really cannot learn by taking notes off of a PowerPoint presentation or opening a textbook. These are things that CSU has gifted me with as a bonus for attending the University.
Diversity
For the first twelve years of my academic career, I attended private/catholic school. Many of the students who went to school with me were from similar backgrounds. Upon starting orientation and my first day of class, I experienced quite an awakening. I could immediately see that there were so many different people from various backgrounds. I could see the extremely wealthy, the poorest of poor in terms of college students, and everything in between. I was not one to judge. I simply thought it was incredible to hear about how my newfound friends were brought up. This included what they liked to do for fun and the different learning styles they choose. In my very first semester, I met a man who was in his mid-sixties. He had been done with school for decades, and he was choosing to go back for two reasons: to further his knowledge and to further his efforts as a writer. He wrote short stories and used the classes he was taking to help supply his ideas. Being exposed to someone like him was the kind of diversity I had never witnessed before.
Downtown
Before attending CSU, it would take me what seemed like forever to get downtown, forever, to navigate downtown, and forever to make it back home. I was directionally challenged when it came to this and it was obvious. After regularly driving to and from CSU, I began to really take in what a great city Cleveland is. Many might disagree, but our city has so much to offer that I did not know existed before. Being downtown no less than four days out of the week really opened up my eyes to this. There would be days where I would be downtown early or out of class early and I would drive around to explore parts of the city that I did not know existed my whole life.
Multi-tasking
When I was in high school, I will admit that my time management was not the greatest. There would be some weeks where I would have a difficult time balancing my academics with work, family time, and a social life. There is no question that college is much more of a challenge than high school was. This kind of forced me to get on track and stay there. This was no longer something I could afford to simply fall behind on and catch up on with ease. It was imperative that I manage my time wisely, otherwise, I would fall apart. I had trouble with that early on as a freshman. I quickly turned that around. My time management and multi-tasking are better than ever before.
"Adulting"
This is relatively similar to multi-tasking, but it is also much more. I was never one to act immaturely in a way that was below my age level. However, I made mistakes like everyone else has. I was never a bad kid, but I still did not know what it truly meant to be an adult. Personally, I think that the topic is absolutely terrifying, but also absolutely exciting. Being in college has forced this upon me as well. While academics help prepare me for my career going forward, everything outside of academics has prepared me for what it means to go out into the real world. Part of this is being able to manage a career while living your life outside of it. It is also about learning how to fail. My time at CSU has helped me to learn that failure will happen and that sometimes there is no way around it. It is not about avoiding all failure, but learning to fail and come back from it even stronger.
