I can’t help but feel sentimental that this is my last Mind of a Freshman column for the academic year. I swear it was just the other day that I was drafting my sample to send in to be considered as a columnist. It’s both weird and magical looking back at that time and to think about how naïve I was. I remember being so incredibly anxious about starting college, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the thought that high school was over. Now, I can’t even imagine going back to a high school-like setting.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons throughout this year, and I could 100% sit here and explain every single one of them. But instead, I’d like to share what I feel is the biggest lesson I’ve learned: Weaknesses do not make you fall back, but rather lift your feet up for you, and it is your decision whether to step forward or not.
I’ve learned to not let my weaknesses weigh me down, and throughout high school I was pretty good at actively working on them rather than just dwelling on them in my head. But college is a lot different from high school in the academic pressure department.
When I started my first semester, I found that a lot of Music and Technology students already had previous knowledge on the subject, such as electronic music terminology or how to use certain softwares. Some even had songs up on Spotify that they had written and produced on their own. I, on the other hand, didn’t have much knowledge at all, and in fact I wasn’t expecting any other students to either.
So I started to feel the pressure. The pressure of this new weakness I had discovered that wasn’t there before. I felt like I was somehow academically behind everyone else, or that I was dumber than the rest of my classmates. I ignored it for a while by labeling it as a something that I couldn’t do anything about and almost put myself in a victim-like mindset.
Slowly I’ve learned that just because I may not know the answer to a question while everyone else does, it doesn’t mean that I’m less intelligent than others. These so-called weaknesses are just more opportunities to learn and grow, and I’ve learned that they are so monumental, natural, and essential in human evolvement. I believe that we all have a choice. You can either let a low test grade shoot you down, or you can take it for what it is and think about what went wrong or how you can do better next time. Confronting your weaknesses is hard, but you can teach yourself to not let them delay you on your path, but push you to move forward.
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