Personal Experience: We Do Not Fear The Unknown '

Improved Essays
I could not agree more with contemporary blogger Teal Swan’s quote that “We do not fear the unknown; we fear what we think we know about the unknown”. Although I would not describe myself as particularly timorous, as I left my family in the Heathrow departure lounge I admit I had a few reservations: How am I going to live in another country? Will I fit into the Babson campus? Will I make friends? What am I going to do with my family 3,000 miles away? Why am I doing this?
Naturally, these fears almost immediately vanished during pre-orientation. Now my main concern was working out how I was going to achieve all of my goals. In retrospect, most of my targets were either unnecessarily profound or naïvely immature. ‘Become a better person’ is vague and unmeasurable, and ‘Get a six-pack and a boyfriend’ is just infantile (and still unachieved). Thankfully I did have some
…show more content…
Most of these goals are a work in progress, but I’m satisfied I’ve laid the foundations for a successful second semester.
To begin at the beginning, a lot of my stress prior to Babson (hence lack of sleep) was caused by my inability to reconcile with my own emotions – particularly in regard to my sexuality. On entering college, my working thesis was that if I actually engage with a pride community, then my seeming state of perpetual stress would just disappear with many of my other wellbeing problems. While I have not been a fully active member of the Pride community, my openness regarding my orientation has vastly improved my temperament. Next semester, it is my aim to further involve myself with Pride to ensure I can help support anyone else in need of help, or simply friendship. With regard to stress, this personal

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter” (“Lean in” 656). I have the same thought with Sandberg. Even now, I am struggling with my career choice. I am scared of making it wrong, of being a failure, and disappointing my family’s expectation.…

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Growing up, I was faced with many adversities, just like a lot of students in California school systems. I was a female, Mexican-born immigrant, growing up in Oakland in a pretty rough neighborhood. In high school I demonstrated grit by applying myself and fighting the urge to quit and finally graduating, while the curriculum helped me, there was still many other burdens in my life apart from education. In community college, when I first began, the “Student fear factor” definitely applied to me because I did not know what college was even about. I was so used to just being in high school where most people did not care if you made it to college, and my family was so busy with work and trying to keep up with rent and bills, that they had no time…

    • 1138 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The first goal for me is to start doing my homework more and turn it in for all of my classes and now I will do this by having a reminder. My second goal is to listen to the teacher while she is talking and to not talk to my friends while she/he is talking. My third and final goal is to get to school on time a lot more by setting an alarm to wake me up in the morning.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Goals are something that I have always thought about in my life. Whether it be graduating high school, passing a test, or going to college. Back then I had a lot of simple goals that were easy to accomplish, but now it’s time to start making those goals much bigger. As for my first goal I would like to graduate college with no complications. To do this I will have to always stay on task, turn work in when it is due, and taking care of things before it’s too late.…

    • 222 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This semester has really helped me see my potential as a student. I have developed new habits, learned new strategies, and exceeded many academic and personal goals. In this essay I will be explaining how this SDEV course helped me do all these things, as well as help me decide the career i will be pursuing. Throughout my college experience I have been pursuing a sociology degree but, the more I learned about Psychology the more I started to be attracted to it. Our Holland Typology assignment really helped me gain insight into both of the majors I have been stuck between.…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The fear management strategy I liked from Cox’s article is to re-define success and failure. Resilience is something that’s been honed into my mind after I started living apart from my parents. Being independent is not easy as it seems, I had to re-learn everything from scratch such as doing the house chores, paying the bills, and making my own meals without a reminder from my nagging parents. One of my experiences has stood…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Despite the fact that I’m juggling two english classes, two history classes, electives and math all on top of that, I didn't know what stress was before this year. On top of my college searching and registering for community college classes I decided to get another job! I have worked since I was 16 years old and so far I’ve had 4 jobs. One job I’ve kept consistently but I figured with college, I would need more money so i recently got a job at starbucks too.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The book Major in Success by Patrick Combs doesn’t teach the readers how to get excellent scores or how to participate in class, it basically focuses on advising the readers, specifically university freshmen and sophomores to obtain a successful life by selecting a declared major that fits their interest, career path and ambition. I would summarize the before and after difference before I had experience to study in the USA. I was touched by the chapter that talks about studying abroad as this chapter really represents me. The book also presents innovative strategies for tackling the six major fears that that most students face and suffer today and provide some useful ways to overcome and handle with those fears. I was like most of others who…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Last name: Perkins First name: Clarissa Do you have a nickname you prefer to go by? If so – what is it? No, I like to be referred to as Clarissa.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Academic Success Plan

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Academic Success Plan For the 2016-2017 school year I have set many goals for myself. Three of my main goals was too first get distinguished honor roll for at least one quarter. This is one of my goals because in my previous years at McKinley I would only get high honor roll and honor roll, but this year I would love to get distinguished honor roll. To achieve this goal I will have to develop a better study habit.…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I am very happy with my grade and I have enjoyed freshman composition. The day I first walked into class, I thought that I was going to fail. Freshman composition was my only college class of the semester and this made me think that it was going to be a tough semester. I was expecting to get a B in this class and I did.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Peak Synthesis Essay You are to synthesize the reading you have done this semester into a personal statement as to how you are going to apply the principles of deliberate practice to your study of music at JHS and beyond. You will submit an essay no less than four pages in MLA formatting, in 12 pt. Times New Roman Font, double spaced. Please keep in mind that content, style and substance will be the determining factor in your grade, not page length. THIS IS NOT A 5 PARAGRAPH ESSAY WITH A THESIS STATEMENT.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are numerous goals that I would like to set and achieve in the upcoming year. I set both school and personal goals. I also set academic and character goals. I hope that I can achieve all of my goals to be the best student and person I can be. The goals I set can change my life and future, so I hope that I can accomplish all of them.…

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Just like many of my peers, I came to college in order to allow myself a better and more option-filled future to do whatever it is that I decide to set my focus on. However, to obtain the right education and experiences to enable this, goals (both short-term and long-term) must be set. My short-term goals include making A’s in all of my courses this semester, securing an internship for the summer involving animals, and acing all of my chemistry 101 tests. As for my long-term goals, I want to get accepted into veterinary school, maintain a 3.5 or higher GPR as I get my undergraduate degree, and to positively impact others lives with my work.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reading is the base of every child’s education. A child has to learn to read to get through life. Reading is used in every subject of school and is even used after school. Since it is the base how teachers build on it is very important and can make or break a child’s education. A child who is taught to love reading will read more and will excel at more things.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays