Is it the mid semester already? I cannot believe it. Since I have reflected some for this week already, I am going to write a reflection of my college life in general.
College is fun. I always dreamed to be a college student when I was in high school. The only reason was because I thought I can learn what I want to learn in college (plus I can be more independent). This was half true and half false when I started classes from the end of August. There are many wonderful opportunities in AU, and I am excited for all of the research and learning that I can do in this environment. However, as a fact that I am a freshman, I first need to finish certain requirements for my degree, which makes me feel like I am back to junior high. Since I was in International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme for high school, I was somehow used to writing research papers and presentations. Learning a new language and re-learning mathematics (I took Math HL) is still fun, but sometimes boring for me.
Being as a part of Global Scholars Program, is definitely a challenge. I have written about my anxiety and excitement in this program in my past blog entries, but I do not think that has changed at all. I am kind of sad that it is the mid semester and I am still not able to actively participate during classes, but I honestly do not know if time will solve this problem for me. I definitely learn so much from the discussions and debates, and it deepened my understanding about all the principles for World Politics (and International Relations) that I have never learned before. One of the curriculum I had in my school in Japan, was to have multiple perspectives when learning. So for the next half of the semester, I will remind myself to have a different perspective from everyone else, and try to make arguments (points) that I can make as the only international student in the cohort, so that it will bring new perspectives and ideas to the discussions. In order to be able to do that, I need to manage my time to spend more time on the readings, since it takes me a longer time than anybody else to read for classes. Also, I want to keep spending my time on my blog posts, because this will be the tool I will be using to organize my thoughts for the class and to do further research to deepen my understanding of a specific concept. Since I am in this program, I cannot give up, and I am going to go beyond my limit and challenge myself until I can be satisfied with myself.
I think life in general is okay. I have comfortable communities (friend groups) that I belong to, and I enjoy my time outside of classes. I am in a dance team now (I am a terrible dancer by the way), and I will probably let you know if I am ever performing which is coming up soon... :)
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