2013-2014 Year in review
To say the very least, my first year in college at the University of Cincinnati was, so far, the best year of my life. I had my ups and downs of course, but overall it has been an extremely valuable, educational, and most importantly, fun year. I struck up relationships that I’m sure will last me a lifetime, learned a lot about myself, and even did a small amount of traveling, all while going to school and getting a first class education.
It all began back in very early May of 2013, though, when I finally decided on attending UC over a few other schools, such as Miami of Ohio, the University of Michigan, and Purdue University. Originally, I had been set on moving away for college, but of course there is a lot more that goes into making your college decision than just the setting. I ended up picking UC because for a few other reasons entirely. The quality of education combined with the low cost of tuition with the scholarship I received was hard to beat. Mix that with the campus and atmosphere in Clifton, being like its own town unto itself, and the choice is a no-brainer. My informational visits and campus tours were especially helpful in making my choice as UC’s programs were easily in the top three of the ten or so schools I also visited. As I look at the past year, from my orientation in July of 2013 to finals in April of 2014, I definitely made the right choice coming to UC. I had many opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom to further my education not just formally but also personally and socially.
After orientation, the first thing I did as a UC student was to attend the UC Annual Honors Welcome Retreat the week before school started in late August. This was probably best and most formative experience that I participated in all year for many reasons, the first being that I met two of my now best friends while on the retreat at Camp Kern just outside of Cincinnati. It was also a time where I could come out of my shell from high school, be myself, and not have to worry about anybody seeing me differently because I had a clean slate. Hardly anyone on the retreat knew who anyone else was, bar a few kids from the same high schools and such, and it was refreshing to be in a situation where everyone else was also in the same boat as I was. On this retreat, I learned the importance of what it means to just be genuine, to be honest and open and to have a good attitude about looking forward to things, specifically my first year of college and living away from home since I was fortunate enough to be able to do so. The retreat was so impactful and I had such a good time there that I applied and was accepted to be a leader for the next retreat coming up in August of 2014, along with a few of my friends from last year’s retreat. I’m looking forward to it immensely and I just hope I can help the students have the same great experience that I had.
My first semester of classes in the fall was also very helpful and educational, and not just from the standpoint of going to classes and learning the course material. I was never the most organized in high school, and I had always had issues with time management, but I like to think that I learned those skills pretty fast through necessity my first semester. Suffice it to say, the first round of exams was not pretty for me at all. After that though, I slowly started to put things together. I set myself a schedule and stuck to it, but I didn’t really figure everything out until the second semester. A big part of why it took me so long to adjust was because I did my best to get involved on and around campus. For my Cincinnatus University Scholarship, I was required to do at least 15 hours of volunteer community service a semester, totaling 30 hours throughout the academic year, so mostly on various weekend days during the year, I would spend the morning or afternoon volunteering around the Cincinnati area. I spent a few Saturday mornings in Over the Rhine at a kid’s basketball camp and also participated in a few campus-wide events such as Into the Streets and Relay for Life. I’ve always enjoyed going out and doing things for a good cause and this past year was no different. I even made some new friends on more than a few of my excursions. As for getting involved on campus, I became a part of the PAC Street Team, PAC standing for the Programs and Activities Council and the Street Team’s job being to help promote and work various PAC events throughout the year such as when Jay Pharoah came to do stand-up at UC or the spring concert with Juicy J and Twenty-One Pilots. Getting involved with this organization was particularly rewarding as I met a lot of really great people and now have the potential to move up in the organization and become even more involved.
Something else I participated in my first year as a part of the University Honors Program was to attend a retreat of the LeaderShape Institute for a week just after the fall semester ended. There was around sixty of us and we were bussed out to a retreat camp in Indiana with the LeaderShape faculty and some faculty, staff, and student leaders from UC. It was an extremely important week in my first year of college as I look back because it really gave me an opportunity to reflect on my first semester and essentially do some soul-searching. As a leadership development retreat, a major part of the week was to first, find out what type of leader everyone was and what kind of tendencies they may have in certain situations, as well as overall. After those kinds of things were established through things like group building exercises and personality tests, the rest of the week was focused on putting together personal visions and action plans to which everyone could apply the skills that they learned throughout the LeaderShape Retreat. I hope to be able to use the lessons I learned in the upcoming years at UC and for the rest of my life as well. For more information, visit the LeaderShape tab above in my learning portfolio.
Most of my involvement on campus last year stemmed from me joining the Pi Kappa Alpha Social Fraternity (Pike). Near the end of September of 2013, I was extended a bid to pledge to this Greek life organization, a few days later I made the best decision of my freshman year of college and accepted my bid. I chose to be a part of this group because I felt like there was a lot they could offer me that not many other student groups can, and I also felt like that I could bring a lot to the table myself for everyone else. After a busy and immensely enjoyable few weeks as a new member of Pike, becoming extremely close with the thirty-six other guys in my pledge class, I was initiated and officially a full member. Since then, I have attended an Executive Leadership Conference in Chicago put on by the Pike national office, been to both Lake Cumberland, Tennessee and Asheville, North Carolina on retreats to become closer with my fraternity brothers and participated in various intramural sports leagues such as dodge ball, volleyball, basketball, and soccer, in which we brought home the championship. I didn’t just join Pike either, I became a part of the Greek community at UC, and with only ten to fifteen percent of students being Greek, we’re a pretty tight knit group. I have gotten to know many more friends in other fraternities and sororities thanks to my involvement in Pike, not to mention all of the other non-Greek people I met throughout the year from classes and other events. I felt like I could hardly walk from class to class without seeing at least ten or so people that I knew, and that’s on a campus of over 40,000 students. I even had the chance to go to UC football’s bowl game and spend a weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina with a few of my Greek friends. Pike has also prepared me better for school in the upcoming years as there are various other members with the same major as me and a lot more experience, both inside the classroom and with UC’s co-op program also. At this point, it’s easy for me to say that the most meaningful relationships I’ve developed over the past year are the friendships I’ve gained with other members of Pike. My fraternity has become so important to me that I applied to be and was appointed to be our House Manager for the upcoming school year, as well as serving on our executive board, and I look forward to continuing the long-standing tradition of being the nation’s top Pike chapter at the Alpha Xi chapter of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at the University of Cincinnati.
The spring semester was much better for me from an overall standpoint as I finally put the pieces of being in college together and spent all of my time wisely. It was during this time that I found out I would be a leader for the upcoming Honors Welcome Retreat as well as the House Manager and exec member for Pike. I helped plan and put on a successful spring concert with PAC, went to Charlotte, and even planned an extremely successful fire truck pull philanthropy event with Pike that I neglected to mention earlier. I even spent a relaxing few days with my best friends in Tampa, Florida during a week in March. As I look at this past year in review, I can’t help but think ahead to all of the things I have planned out for me in the year to come, some of which I have already mentioned. I look forward to being able to apply what I learned on the LeaderShape Retreat to my positions as House Manager and Welcome Retreat Leader. I hope to start the next year off better and stronger than I did this past year, which shouldn’t be too hard to do since I’ll only be in classes for one semester before I start my first engineering co-op. As of now, I plan on being in classes for the fall semester of 2014 while working to find a co-op for the spring semester of 2015. There is also the possibility of studying abroad at some point, co-op and academic schedule permitting, but I would definitely like to get out of the country for the first time before I become too busy. With all of that being said, I plan to just deal with things as they come and go, using the lessons I learned from my first year of college at the University of Cincinnati to hopefully have an even better year this time around.