In my junior year of high school, as I established the first official student newspaper Assumption High had seen in years, my interest in journalism flourished into passion. That summer I discovered the Louisiana Scholastic Journalism Institute, a weeklong workshop hosted by the Manship School of Mass Communication here at Louisiana State University. It is designed to teach high school students hands-on about the fields of print and broadcast journalism, all while spending the week on the beautiful campus of LSU. I loved every second of it. Here I was at one of the best journalism schools in the south, meeting wonderful people and learning things that I actually enjoyed learning. Here is where I discerned two major parts of who I wished to be: a journalist, and an LSU Tiger.

I am but one of 5,481 first-time degree-seeking freshmen enrolled at LSU as the hopeful class of 2015. I am majoring in Mass Communications with a focus in Journalism, and I’m working toward a minor in Political Science. I also have a part-time student job at Tiger TV. These are the things that matter now. Darelle Deslatte and Tabitha Bordelon, two Career Compass counselors, helped me envision the present only a year ago when they told me I could succeed at a place like LSU. I was not valedictorian of my senior class, nor was I in the top 20 in the ranking of grade point averages. I scored a 23 the third time taking the ACT, just high enough to get accepted by LSU. But I made it here, I’m doing well, and I’m going to keep getting better.

I didn’t completely hate high school, and I certainly didn’t love it. It just felt like something I had to do to get to the place where I really wanted to be. I always thought that place was college, and I was right. The first thing college faced me with at the end of August was change. Although I was already fairly familiar with the city, moving to Baton Rouge was quite a change in itself. Realizing the shocking price of grocery shopping, burning something as simple to cook as chicken, and accidentally dying all of my white towels pink were just several hardships I faced during the first week without my mommy. Granted, I live off campus and have no meal plan with the student dining halls. I suppose that had I chosen to live on campus in one of the dormitories I would not have been faced with the opportunity to make unplanned blackened chicken, but the change would still be there. After only a few weeks I have become a professional grocery shopper, laundry doer, and well, I’ve learned to just avoid the stove at all costs. The less cooking I have to do, the better! Microwaves – now these are the most miraculous cooking devices ever invented. Easy Mac and hotdogs, anyone? One of the biggest changes I’ve experienced thus far was moving away from my family, but as a student I have faced great changes as well.

For the first time in my life I’ve had to purchase my textbooks for every course I’m taking. My classes are much bigger than I was used to from high school, which is usually the case for freshmen at LSU. General Education courses are required for every major and can mean up to 600 students in one auditorium classroom. The thought of 600 students in one class sounded quite intimidating to me, but I was mistaken. I decided that I would claim my seat in the first or second row of each class, which lowered my visual class size to about 40. Thus, I’m not intimidated or distracted by the amount of people in my classes. I didn’t believe my sister before the semester began when she told me to expect to do about an hour of schoolwork at home each day to stay on track with assignments and reading. I believe her now. Laziness is not an option if I’m going to have grades I wish to acquire. In this first month of college I have read more than I’ve ever had to read throughout high school. Granted, I got by with a fairly high GPA in high school with reading barely anything at all outside of class. In college, I’ve been expected to learn a lot on my own from what I read out of textbooks. However, it isn’t as difficult as it seems. I found that I learn a lot from just reading without even trying to learn it. In college, this along with numerous note cards has been what I call studying. It’s not very exciting, but necessary to say the least. I enjoy all of my classes so far. For me, the overwhelming part of school has not been the difficulty level of any particular course, but the workload of all five courses at once. This is the academic transition I was forced to make as a student, and I am not alone.

Freshmen year is deemed to be nothing but annoying and stressful, the worst of the four years of college. I see it as a fresh start. From this first month I’ve tried to determine whether I should describe college as easy or difficult, and contrary to what I thought it would be, I can’t rightfully describe it as either of the two. Rather, I directly identify college as a challenge. I am challenged by my professors, but moreover, I challenge myself. I’m now in a place where I make my own decisions and take my own steps toward what I long to achieve, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.