Author: Jaime M. Arena

My name is Bella Goodyear, I am eighteen years old and I am a freshman at SUNY Geneseo. My major is Early Childhood Education with a concentration in music. In this blog, I intend to dive into some thoughts and experiences I’ve had while attending my first few weeks of college. First, though, I feel it is important to introduce myself a bit. I grew up in a family of five with my mom, dad, and two sisters (a family of seven actually, if you count my cat and dog). I love music, nature walks, skiing, spending time with friends, and stickers. My home is Rochester, New York, only a thirty-five-minute drive from Geneseo. Most of my life has been spent in Rochester, but for a few of my childhood years, my family lived in Dallas, Texas. Rochester is very much still my true home, but Geneseo is already starting to feel like my home away from home. 

Throughout the summer, I experienced many conflicting feelings about going to college. Every day, I would go back and forth between feeling ecstatic and ready to move on from high school to experiencing absolute despair over moving to a new environment and being away from my family and friends. Luckily, though, I came into Geneseo with one of my very best friends by my side, and knowing her, along with a few others from my high school, has made my first-year experience significantly more comfortable. The first week was orientation, which was a generally beneficial experience. I made many new friends, grew close with my suitemates, and began to learn my way around campus. By the end of orientation week, though, I found myself sick of ice-breakers and waking up early for info meetings; I felt ready to move on. Next came classes; I found it nearly impossible to wake up for my 9:30 class even though you would assume my body would be prepared after years of starting school at 7:45 a.m., five days a week. I’ve been getting more used to it, though, and I haven’t been late to any classes (yet). I have study buddies in many classes, which I’m sure will come in handy, especially during exam season. So far, I don’t particularly enjoy one class, but I also do not particularly dislike any of my courses.

I predict that this class, Writing Seminar INTD 105: Theatre: Therapy for Veterans, will become one of my favorites because it is writing-based. I’ve always preferred English over math, foreign language, history and just about any other class. Some of my favorite classes in high school were AP Language and AP Literature. Through watching my writing improve over time in Lang, and analyzing incredible pieces of literature such as Frankenstein and Hamlet in Lit, I learned lifelong skills and strategies. I am excited to learn even more writing skills through this course while learning about theatre therapy, a topic I know little to nothing about.

Along with INTD 105, I believe I will soon start to love my Elements of Music Theory Class (MUSC 189). As of right now, the course is moving at a comfortable pace for me, and I already know a lot that we read and reviewed in the textbook from years of playing the trumpet. I’m excited to take on the class. Still, know that soon it will become much more complex and fast-paced, so I’ve decided that if I walk out of the class feeling like I never want to take another music class ever again, I will consider switching my concentration. 

In terms of friendships, I have developed a group that I feel content and comfortable with. I am grateful to be in a suite because it’s like having a built-in friend group. I know some girls in the suite better than others, but from those friendships, even more friendships have blossomed with mutual people. However, I hope to continue meeting people and making friends, hopefully through participating in clubs and activities. I hope to continue to make connections with people alike and different from me, and I am excited for the many experiences to come the rest of this semester and beyond. 

Although I have many worries, especially about upcoming tests and exams, I am excited for the rest of this semester. I have high expectations that in the coming weeks, I will be productive in my classes, expand my friendships, develop important connections with classmates and professors, and have a fun first-semester college experience!

                       

My name is Julia Weber. I am nineteen years old from Fairport, NY. I have wanted to go to SUNY Geneseo since I was about ten years old when I first came here to watch my older cousin play lacrosse. I had somehow convinced myself that I would not be able to get into Geneseo, so the moment I received my acceptance letter in the middle of January, I celebrated with my family. Since I was a young girl, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher because a good amount of my teachers are Geneseo alumni and they have all raved about the education program here. 

When I first moved into my dorm, I was excited but also a little bit nervous. I was excited to begin this new chapter in my life and to make new friends, but I was also nervous because after orientation week ended, my classes would begin. I was nervous about how much work I would have for all my classes. I feared that my workload would be so unbearable that it would be difficult to find time to socialize with my new friends. During syllabus week, the workload was not terrible and it was a great way to ease into this new chapter of my life. Still, over the past few weeks, I have noticed an increase in the work and I am getting pretty good with my time management when it comes to balancing schoolwork and my social life. Some ways that I’ve been able to make friends is by joining the running club because I ran cross country and track in high school. I did not want to run competitively anymore, but I wanted to continue to stick with it. 

After my classes are done for the day, I like to go to the library and get my homework done and get myself organized when it comes to what I need to study for and when I should study the material. From that point, I typically return to my dorm and spend time with my friends. In the hallway on my floor, there is a table that we all sit at every night and we talk about our recent experiences with our new classes and tell stories about high school. Sometimes, my friends and I will walk down to Red Jacket at about 9:00 at night and we will get ice cream and french fries. On the weekends, my friends and I like to walk around the town of Geneseo, have movie nights, and sometimes hang out in our dorm rooms.

So far, my courses have been pretty good. Monday is my favorite day of the week this semester because I only have psychology in the middle of the day. Since I have one class on Monday, I like to use Monday to catch up on my schoolwork for my other classes later in the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busiest days of the week because I have three classes on those days at 9:30 a.m. I have my dance class, which is a great start to my day because it gets me energized for the day. I also like that I have dance because it is an easier class for me and I need an art credit to graduate. Luckily, my dance class counts towards that credit. 

After dance, I have to rush to the other side of campus to get to my Theater: Therapy For Veterans class because there is only a fifteen-minute time gap between the two classes. I have been enjoying the class and I can’t wait until we have more writing assignments for that class because I have always enjoyed writing. I am interested to see what the writing assignments for this class will contain as we get further into the semester. I enjoy writing and I never really considered how veterans use theater as a source of therapy, so I am excited to do more research on that. After doing some of the required reading for this class, nothing in particular stands out to me that I could make a good connection with yet. Still, I felt like I gained some good tips for having a successful group discussion when it comes to adding to a discussion or changing the topic.

After my writing class, I have a two-hour break until my next class, so I typically use that time to unwind and eat lunch. Once the two hours are up, I go to my math class. My math class is pretty simple, but I know that it will be more difficult as the semester goes on because even though it is technically elementary-level math, the purpose of the class is to teach you how to teach math. On Wednesdays, I have a class called Introduction to The Education Major. I’ve only been to that class a few times since it is only once a week, but I can’t wait to get further into it and get an idea of what the next four years will be like for my major. On Friday, I have a class for my LLC that has to do with volunteering. LLC stands for Living Learning Communities. This means that you live in the same building and have similar interests to you. Several people live in my building who also take this class. This class is also once a week, so I still don’t know what exactly to expect from the class. What I do know is that I will have to have an important service project for the end of the semester.

So far, I have been enjoying my classes and the friendships that I have made this semester. I hope that I can continue to keep up with the friends that I have already made and I hope to continue to make even more friends. As for my classes, I feel a little overwhelmed when it comes to keeping track of what assignments are due, but my goal for the end of the semester is to have a good system down for managing my time and my studying habits to get a good GPA.