My year-in-review is a response to the following prompt: 

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"In what way(s) did you personally grow this year? How did you demonstrate or rebuild the resilience needed to move forward? How will you utilize resources and your support network to hold yourself accountable in continuing this growth?". 

Over the course of this past school year, I believe I have grown in many ways and learned many lessons. I believe all my growth can be explained by illustrating how I developed a better understanding of the effort required to be successful in college. As a student making the transition from high school to college, I assumed that I could continue using the same methods and keeping the same habits that I had developed during high school, especially during senior year. I learned, however, that this is simply an incorrect assumption. Although I had been given advice earlier that many things in college would not be the same as in high school, I soon discovered this for myself. Despite my realization early on that it takes incredible discipline and diligence to succeed in college, especially as an engineering major, it took me nearly the entire school year to adjust accordingly. In fact, I am still in the process of improving my habits, based on my college experience thus far, in order to become the best student that I can be.

While I did well academically this past year, earning the Dean’s List in Fall and Spring, I definitely did better second semester. I believe the main reason is because I was able to use my knowledge, successes, and failures from first semester to improve in the second semester. To be specific of my growth this year, I made better goals for myself because I knew what I could accomplish, and I could visualize what was possible and what was not. I improved my time management through the constant use of a planner and calendar. I reminded myself that it is ok to ask for help and it is ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. I was also reminded that when you make mistakes, it is best to be honest with yourself and others so you can get the help you need. I used this lesson to my utmost advantage because I heavily utilized my resources, like SI sessions, office hours, and tutor rooms, from the beginning and I earned great success. Lastly, I was reminded that teamwork is stressful and hard yet rewarding and challenging in the best way. This is because you can use what you learn from working in teams and apply it to any aspect of your life moving forward. I learned that collaboration truly is key to success in college and life in general.

Evaluating my past work and using it to improve is something that I have done for a long time and will continue to do. This past year was especially memorable because of the significant growth that occurred. Moving forward, I will continue to use all the lessons that I have learned and I plan to follow my over-arching goal which I developed. That goal is to take more responsibility as a student at a university, and to not just go through the motions but stay active, focused, and engaged. Overall, I can confidently say that I am an improved version of myself compared to when I started college in the Fall, and that I intend to continue growing, thriving, and learning here at UC so that I can fulfill my aspirations and earn my college degree.