This is Emily Rodgers. (Soon to be 18 years old this February)
And the challenge she's facing like most high school students her age is graduation.
Emily is a senior at Winslow Township High School in Atco, New Jersey.
She's eagerly awaiting her high school graduation this year, where after she'll be commuting from home to Camden County College.
And soon Emily and her peers will soon be faced with all the excitements and fears that come with their first steps into the real world. I interviewed Emily to get a better look at what goes on in the minds of 2012's graduates about school, friends, and life.
Excitements:
"I'm excited I don't have to wake up at 6 in the morning."
Emily like many other teenagers finds many things to be exciting about college.
Her biggest excitement she says is to spend more time with friends. She'll have the opportunity to take the classes that she likes (hopefully they'll be more enjoyable for her), go to parties, and just make memories.
And while many teens can't wait go to school half way across the country, Emily's perfectly content with going to school at home. "I'm relieved that I don't have to be in a dorm and worry about things like laundry; I'm horrible at doing laundry."
With a schedule that'll be more flexible than her tightly structured one at Winslow High, Emily really wants to become more involved in extracurricular activities and community service. One of her not so hidden talents (seeing how she's an active member in the drama club and the school talent shows) is Emily is a wonderful singer. "I want to join an acapella group, choir, and study abroad everywhere," she excitedly answered when I asked what clubs she was interested in join once at college. From Asia, to Europe, to Australia she wants to learn languages and see the world. While back home she wants to continue her interests in environmentalism and animal rights.
Fears:
Although Emily's transition into college life may be a bit easier than others because she'll be commuting, she has made it very clear that she still has fears about entering college life.
Emily is an aspiring East Asian Languages or Game Design major. She said, “In 10 years I see myself on an island (laughing) just kidding. I want to be in a good relationship with a happy family, working in a place that I find enjoyable but also where I’ll be respected and not antagonized as the “woman”. I want to have an impact.” Emily like many incoming first years has big dreams and imagines a future where she can live comfortably. But she also shares another similarity...
The stresses of how to pay for student loans, deal with peer pressure, or learn how to network will continue and always resonate in the back of her mind, but Emily stated clearly that her biggest fear of all is:
“I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to handle it.”
The fear of failure and not being able to keep up with the balance between a social life and academics. Just after four short years in high school, students are being pushed out in the "adult" world, where the pressures of bills, drugs, consequences, and growing up are becoming all to real and all too quickly. Many students feel like Emily; that they won't adjust to all the freedom they'll have after graduation, coming out under from Mommy's and Daddy's wing, so easily.
Or the fear of if the major they chose will be able to support them after them in the future. Or even before that, the confusion of what major to even choose. Many of us who are already enrolled in colleges and universities still have not decided on a major. Students who are sophomores and juniors.
“I’m worried that I won’t be able to do it. I have quit so many things in my life like classes, tutoring, clubs, but if I quit this…I don’t have much confidence in myself, so I need people to have confidence in me and tell me it’s going to be okay…but it’s just so important that I complete this to have a good future.”
so...
The question now is, as an Orientation Leader, what can I do to help my friends, and future peers coming who are coming into the college scene?
Reflection:
There are many things that we as Orientation Leaders can do to help incoming freshman, but I want to focus on 3 main points that I feel are essential to start with.
1. Set the right example: 90% of what you learn is just from listening, watching, and repetition. If a good example is set from the beginning, students will unconsciously begin to mimic what they see. Its because Emily had good mentors and leader in high school that she says she's not scared to be a leader and set an example for her friends, peers, and siblings. If Emily can pick up a skill as difficult as learning how to become a leader in her high school so early, imagine how quickly she could learn proper time management and networking just from watching one of her friends at college do it.
2. Encouragement: Whether you are the President, Pope, Martin Luther King Jr., the biology professor at your community college, or a nurse in your local hospital, you wouldn't be where you are today if someone hadn't encouraged you that you could get there. Our incoming first years have been encouraged this far to enter college, but now that the circumstances push them to become more independent, the encouragement they might of once had is now either weaning or gone. Since Orientation Leaders are some of the first staff members new students meet, it is up to us to start their encouragement process. By doing this, students like Emily who feel they have no confidence in themselves will begin to find the drive that is necessary to pull them through struggles and keep moving forward.
3. Strengths:
This is an image I made a few years ago, which I like to call a Graph of Life.
Listed here are 11 qualities (please don't think people are limited to only these 11), and all of these qualities symbolizes a strength a may person have or is capable of achieving.
These 11 qualities are some of the easiest to identify. Why is that important?
Because during orientation when you may be faced with a student who could be having a hard time connecting with an activity or the group, by identifying one or more of these strengths in them they may find the will they need to bounce back.
As Orientation Leaders, it is also part of our duty to help students identify the strengths they have in themselves. If we can do this, then later on they may be able to find and develop other strengths in themselves they never thought they had. Strengths that will help then through the rest of their college career and their future.
-Andreana Barefield
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