In Which I Bestow (Hopefully) Helpful Advice onto Future Friends

Dear Class of 2017,

I can’t believe that I was standing—more like sitting—where you are two short years ago. You know what how the old saying goes: “Time flies when you’re having fun.” Unfortunately, time also flies when you’re in college and you have to manage your own time, on top of managing your social life, and that’s my first piece of advice:

1.    This campus practically eats time. 

You should invest in a good one of these. One that's on the wall, in your face, not in your pocket being forgettable. 

It’s true. There were so many times when I would be sitting in my room, minding my own business, just me, myself and Netflix, when I glanced at the clock and realized that my next class was in ten minutes. Uh-oh. I’ve been able to recover from such lapses in responsibility, but if you were careful with your time in high school, you’ve got to be like an over-protective parent in college, which is a not-so graceful segue into my next nugget of wisdom:

2.    Check your Converse email constantly.

You see this screen? It's your new homepage. And that's an order. 

 Your Converse email not only serves as your primary form of communication on campus, it can be good practice for the “real world,” where your future bosses aren’t going to check your latest status update to find out why you didn’t show up to work. Funny thing is, your professors won’t either. Even you get along swimmingly with your English Composition professor, he or she isn’t your instant BFFAE. (That’s best friend forever and ever for those wondering...) Use your school email; it will change your life!

3.    If you find yourself stressed, freaking out or just generally losing control, talk to someone about it!

Find time to de-stress, or this will be you...

Anyone. It can be your roommate, your best friend, one of your CAs, one of your PEAS, even one of your professors. It simply isn’t worth the anxiety and emotional turmoil to just bottle everything up inside and let it all build up until you break down. Trust me on this one. It’s important. I really let my workload get to me, and one day I found myself unable to talk to anyone or even laugh with my friends because I was so worried about how I was doing in class. When I finally broke down, it took my best friend, half a box of Kleenex (no joke!) and ice cream at Gee to get me back to some semblance of normal. Heck, if you don’t feel like talking face-to-face with someone, practice using your Converse email. (It’s better than nothing!)

4.    Find your best schedule, and stick to it.

Okay, so it's not your schedule, but you get the point. 

Pithy advice about surviving college doesn’t get any shorter or sweeter than this, kids. As soon as you get your classes straight, you’re in all the courses you wanted (or almost wanted), and you’ve figured out where they all are, make friends with Microsoft Excel and make a handy dandy schedule chart. I don’t care if you color-code it, write it in Braille or jot it down during class, just do it. It will help you more than you know.  Getting on a stable, efficient routine will help you in so many ways.

If you have any questions, or want to talk more, just email me (using your Converse email) or come and find me.

Love,

Grace Egan 

In Which I Wish Time Travel Were Real, and Try to Make Do In the Meantime

Life is my biggest time management issue.

I am not trying to be facetious or funny, but in all seriousness, I find myself stressing out over my life and its busyness. School is really my biggest challenge, as it requires me to juggle both long and short-term assignments for multiple classes, as well as extracurricular activities. Ironically, high school was the first time that I had problems with time management, and it got so bad, my parents took me to get psychological testing and—surprise, surprise! —I was diagnosed with ADHD. Being on medication and counseling have helped me a lot with my management but it’s been very hard to learn skills that I have been expected to have but have only pretended. My mother and I have engaged in many a shouting match over my inability to pick up my administrative skills magically after being medicated, but we’ve since concluded that there is no magical remedy for a Type B personality, and so our expectations have been revised.

I am also a chronic “avoider.” When I have so much to do, that the mere thought of the sheer magnitude of my workload reduces me to a sobbing mess, I begin to stress over where I have to start working and how I am going to finish on time. By the time I devise an effective strategy, my assignments are inevitably due the next day and I am forced to pull yet another all-nighter. My dad used to call me a “passive procrastinator” and I have to admit I agree. (Just look at the time stamp of this entry...)

            My greatest time management tool is my giant whiteboard calendar. This little beauty helps me map out due dates and dates of important and not-so-important events as well as serving as an outlet for my artistic whims. My avoidance has become more avoidable (I couldn’t resist) and I am getting better at gauging what is due and when and what I must do to complete it in a timely manner. My stress levels are still quite high as I still have to settle into a routine and accustom myself to life on my own, but I have been successful in my attempts to be better organized thus far.

            Honestly, I do not think that I am at all qualified to give advice concerning time management. I am still learning and have felt the pressure of feeling like I needed to perform as well as my peers even though I was trying to build eighteen years’ worth of administrative skills from scratch. But I will gladly tell anyone that even though life can be stressful, it is very important that one takes time to sit down and realize that the world is not going to end just because one hasn’t finished one’s homework. Yes, it is vital that students complete assignments on time, but stressing out over what is not a dire task doesn’t help get anything done either. 

In Which I Embark on a Four-Year Quest for Knowledge and Musical Adventure

I decided to come to college because I love to learn. In high school, I took AP classes and was an International Baccalaureate diploma candidate, all of my own free will. (Crazy, I know...) I slaved away at my classes and made decent grades, but did not enjoy my overall school experience. The students at the very first college I visited were all extremely smart and that intimidated me at first, but I realized that they were able to study subjects that they loved at a much, much deeper level than I could ever achieve during high school. When it was time for me to start applying to schools, I knew that I wanted to go straight to college instead of taking a gap year, because I could not wait to start learning at a whole new level and experiencing life on my own.

To be perfectly honest, I did not originally want to come to Converse at all, mostly because of two scary words: “women’s” and “college”. I did not want to have to deal with spending all of my waking hours with just girls, nor did I wish to have the last male faces I saw to be those of my fellow seniors. (Sorry, guys, but I had just spent four long years with you.) My mother did not share similar sentiments. She signed me up to stay overnight at Converse and, much to my vexation, did not even ask me if I wanted to go! I eventually got over my original bitterness towards the situation and packed my bags a few months later and headed down to Spartanburg. That visit sealed the deal. Converse was officially at the top of my list from that point on. My hostess, Lainie Sowell (who I guess is “responsible” for my coming to Converse in a way), and I had so much fun together and all of the girls I met were so sweet and eager to talk to me about how much they loved their school and even about how much they wanted me to go there too. Long story short, I picked Converse because not only did I receive generous financial aid (which had been a daunting barrier throughout my college search) but I felt like I truly belonged here and that people loved me and wanted me here as well.

Music has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. I began violin lessons at four and have not stopped since. But when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I had formulated an actual answer, my answer varied from a teacher, to a meteorologist, to an author, to a lawyer, and finally, after taking IB Psychology my junior year, a developmental and forensic psychologist. A life of working with children and busting criminals was all I thought I wanted until my violin teacher left me a voicemail that changed my life. She teaches Suzuki violin at a local school and some of her students’ parents had asked her if there was any way for their children to receive tutoring in violin over the summer. She referred them all to me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was glad to be of service, both as a fellow pupil of the Suzuki method as well as someone eager to earn a little extra spending money. The first lessons were a bit awkward; I was not entirely sure of what I was supposed to do and was still a stranger to my students. I was not even sure that I wanted the opportunity any more because I felt that I was not meant for the job. My parents encouraged me to just throw myself into it, and if I still felt that giving lessons was not going to work out, I could stop. I took their advice, and, two years later, I am studying music education at Converse. I discovered that I absolutely love teaching and spending time with children, and although I still have a love for psychology, I will be perfectly content with reading books and enjoying the occasional episode of “Bones” or “Lie to Me*”.

Finally, I would just like to mention that Willy Wonka was the first person dead, alive or fictitious who taught me that using your imagination as you worked was a wonderful thing. In fact, you could even use your imagination to make work seem like play, create amazing things, and bring joy to other people on top of that. Work can seem at times like a place where people go to be vaguely miserable from nine in the morning to five or later at night just to earn their salary. Secondly, while I understand that not everyone has the privilege of the career path of his or her choice, I also know that Willy Wonka took the ordinary business of making candy and transformed it into something extraordinary. He decided that he was not happy with the current candy-making system and he made his own way, which proved to be far superior to that of his competitors’. I love teaching, and I love sharing the gift of learning with other people, but I also know that any teacher’s job is far from full of chocolate waterfalls and giant gummy bears. Thanks to Mr. Wonka, I now understand that I can put my (sometimes too) vivid imagination to work and get something useful out of it, as well as make other people’s lives better, just by using my brain. After all, if I want to change the world, really, “there’s nothing to it.”