As this semester comes to an end, like most of my peers, I am getting ready to graduate and hopefully begin a new chapter in my life and put all of the fine schooling that I have received to use. As I reflect on my time here at Mercy, I must say that I have definitely came along way. Im not just talking about my accomplishments as a student but also socially, meeting new people and befriending young adults that I would have never even spoken to if it weren’t for school. Me being 32 years old, I never knew that I actually had so much in common with people that were 10-12 years younger then me. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not, that fact that I adapted to the situation and turned it into a positive experience and was also welcomed and embraced by professors and classmates is just amazing to me. Then I thought, why couldn’t I pay attention and do this when I went to college 12 years ago?

One reason I think that I didn’t succeed in college my first time was I was not mature enough to be on my own. I think this is most students problems when they are attending a school away from home. I mean don’t get me wrong, I grew up in a house where I was given the most freedom, but being away from home for the first time, I was unable to handle the transition. In a funny way I guess you can say it was too much freedom. It was extremely difficult for me to remain focussed when no authority was around. Sometimes we disregard the role our parents play in us kids actually getting up for school. I know I did.

Another reason I didn’t I failed at my first attempt at college was my choice of college. At the time I chose to go to SUNY Albany, It just so happens that Albany was top 5 in the country in party schools. Because Albany was a state university it had a population of 33,000 students. The campus is the second largest concrete structure in the United States, after the Pentagon. The fact that the campus was so large there was a unusual mix of ethnicities on campus. The female to male ration was also 4 to 1, so that was a plus. Picking a party school should not have been my priority at that time even though it was. I do not recommend going to a nationally ranked party school if you are trying to actually learn.

I must say that I did actually meet allot of people in Albany. None I would really consider a true friend. Thats my own fault though because instead of trying to make new friends, I attended college with 80 percent of my friends from high school. We were a tight knit circle. Our only problem was we brought that New York City attitude up there so we were not trying to make any new friends. When I think about it now, I was actually a very rude person to anyone I didn’t know. This is one of the biggest mistakes I made. I feel that if I was more sociable, it would have helped me in situations I ran in to later, on campus.

I have to admit, Mercy College is extremely different from my previous college. For one, the total amount of enrolled students at Mercy is a little over 11,000 students. That is almost 1/3 of the amount of students that were at SUNY Albany, which means there is less people mingle with and that helped me stay out of trouble and focus on school. Also the classrooms were less crowded and that helped the professors teach more effectively. The fact that I have matured plays a big part in why I was able to finish school as well. Back then I didn’t take college serious at all. I just wanted to party. Now i see the importance of getting a degree.

I guess what I am really trying to say is that if you find yourself stressed over graduating college, don’t worry about it because there is always time to finish. It might be easier for some people to later on in life, like I’m about to.