Connections and Perspectives

My time in college has been quite the ride I would say. I entered my freshman year at Limestone University thinking that I would spend my four years playing lacrosse, and even make it to the pros one day. And it is interesting to see how much can change in a persons life. I came to Georgia Southern not knowing a single person. So it was quite the uncomfortable and lonely. But exciting at the same time. I was excited to come to a large university and get the real "college experience". But I soon figured out that I would have to dedicate more of my time to my education as well.
At my old school we had private tutors, mandatory study hall hours among other things to make sure all the athletes were doing well in class. When I came to Georgia Southern I was overwhelmed with free time, no more waking up at 5am to run and no more late night bus rides. I wasn't really sure what to do honestly.
So I began to focus on my eduction, my time at Georgia Southern has taught me a lot. While I am a marketing major, I still enjoyed all the classes not associated with my major. One in particular that stood out to me was my Intro to religion class my first year. The reason that class stood out so much to me was because the professor made us engage everyday in conversation. Sometimes there were uncomfortable things to talk about, but to me that is how teaching should be done. And one of the points that was stressed in the course was acceptance and love. To treat people with love and accept them for their different views, even though they might be totally different from your own.
This might be my biggest takeaway from my time here, to put myself in other peoples shoes and try to understand their perspective. To try to understand peoples struggles and hardships can create a greater sense of community and bring people from different backgrounds together. 
Secondly my biggest takeaway from my time here is time management. I mentioned I had tutors, and set study hall hours. But when I got here I had so much free time I was not sure hot to structure my time. I quickly learned to had to dedicate more time out of my day to studying and classwork while also balancing a job as well. It is not easy task and quite a lot of college students were in the same boat I was in. But time management is a skill that will last with me forever and help me become successful in my career.