The third week of the second semester of college and I have no idea what is going on in my classes. This semester will not go well. The most hassle this semester is not my classes but the elevator situation in the 23rd Street building. For the past two weeks I have been climbing the stairway to heaven only to stop at the thirteenth floor. Arriving at the thirteenth floor drenched in sweat. My older college companions tell me that college really starts in the junior year. The first few years of taking requirements and electives are supposedly a breeze. A friend of mine in the premed field recently expressed relief as he told me he passed his first exam with a seventy. This situation raises the question; how difficult is college really?
Hitherto the struggle I’ve faced since the start of college is during finals week. The feeling to have multiple exams on the same date can only be described as stress. To study for a final that will determine whether you will pass or fail the course is life threatening. On the verge of failing my calculus class in the first semester (not all Asians are good at math), I studied for seven days and seven nights for the departmental final only to barely pass the class with a C. Am I proud to get a C? No. But what choice did I have then; it was do or die. I would label week of my life as adversity. The feeling of pressure mixed with despair bring about dedication in a person. Maybe I should have taken the advice of my peers and study calculus before even taking the class to have a head-start. But I didn’t and therefore suffered the consequences. If I had the power to leapt back in time I would have tried harder in the first semester rather than treating it as if it was high school all over again. I’m sure we all have moments in our lives where we wish to either redo the events of our past or correct them.
What part of your life would you wish you could have redone for the better?
Jun Xing Ke
