grades

Having just finished my freshman year, I was looking back on some of the feedback that I’ve gotten from GSIs when I realized how the grading scale significantly differs from high school compared to college.

We are not here to understand our role immediately. We are here to enter a world of possibility, to be the impostor and welcome the stranger.

If these traditions revolve around stressing about a point here or there, it tells us that being a Bear means living an anxious academic life.

It made me feel out of control like phantom hands were controlling a marionette doll — except the doll was me, and the hands were my own brain.

I made a choice in the span of a second with the burden of a ticking clock weighing on my shoulders. Stupid mistakes are inevitable.

 I was somewhat aware of my erratic pursuits of dopamine and novel stimuli, but the problem was that there wasn’t a language in my culture to identify and to describe these issues, and certainly not in a healthy, constructive way.

Here are a few things you can do to get your heart pumping that do not require you to listen to a spin instructor talk about finding your “inner dragon.”

The ending of my freshman year was about as anticlimactic as me closing my laptop, but I did feel slightly relieved that a part of it was over. Yet with this relief, I realized that one crucial emotion was missing: pride.

Falling behind during normal semesters is rough. But we can’t press pause — lectures go on regardless. Online, however, there’s always tomorrow.

Now that I’ve finally figured it out, I thought I’d share some of my tips with you so we can all receive "gold stars" throughout the semester.