As the first half of spring semester comes to end, I reflected upon my improvements from the past two semesters, and I am proud of how I made a comeback from a bad couple of months academically and physically. Last semester, I had overwhelmed myself with the increasing difficulty of my business prerequisite courses, which was quite a change from my easier general education courses that I had experienced my freshman year of college. As a result of my successful freshman year, I had suffered the infamous "sophomore slump," and didn't focus as much as I needed to on my studies, resulting in passing, but less than satisfactory grades for my personal standards. Because all semester I was very stressed out about my slipping grades, I also began to lose focus on my health and gained weight due to my lack of healthy eating and exercise. When the semester ended, I was relieved that such a stressful time was over, and decided that I would make a change. I wanted to improve my GPA that had fallen as well as take more care of my body.

Spring semester arrived and I was very looking forward to making the change that I was desperate for. Thankfully since I was almost complete with my general education and business prerequisite courses, I would only be taking 12 credit hours, which allowed me to focus on fewer classes and hopefully make better grades by focusing on a smaller variety of classes. I began to truly focus on taking good notes and copying them from my OneNote app on my laptop to my notebook, in which I would handwrite them. This proved to be a success, and my grades began to make a comeback from my freshman year. I felt more confident in my ability to succeed in my courses, and even started seeing improved results. I look forward to seeing my GPA rise back to my original 3.6 and beyond, something that I had worked hard for my very first semester.

As for my physical improvement, after years of failed attempts to lose weight on my own, I knew that I needed either a workout buddy or a paid fitness class where I would be obligated to attend since I would be paying for it. Luckily, it did not take long before I ended up finding both. One of my friends informed me of a local gym that was offering a Groupon for kickboxing classes and wanted me to join her. After attending the first class, we loved the positive atmosphere and inclusion of all fitness levels and decided to permanently join them, signing a one-year contract. The best part was that our job offers gym reimbursement, meaning that our job would be paying us back our monthly membership fees as long as we attended at least eight times a month. So far I have completed one month and I have lost 5 pounds, and I plan on continuing to eat as healthy as I can so that I can lose more weight and feel healthier and more confident about myself.

The semester is only halfway done, and I could not be happier and proud about the improvements from last semester that I have made academically and physically. I cannot wait to see how these next few months make a positive impact for me!