My College Experience: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly ...Part 1

My college experience has been long, frustrating, and only a few times rewarding. I started as a freshman at the U of M, Morris right out of high school. I didn't have to study in high school and didn't know how to once I got to college. I had been naturally smart and had always gotten A's and was quickly overwhelmed by the college level of textbooks and dicussions. Morris was known for their academics and I couldn't keep up. That's not entirely true, I could have done very well if I had only tried. I became very depressed (though I didn't know that's what it was) and my grades and friendships suffered greatly. I began skipping more and more classes even though I didn't have a legitimate reason to miss them. I didn't enjoy any of my classes and though I was on the track team, even that was not fun anymore. I withdrew socially and after two years there I left a miserable shell of the person I was when I arrived. I had graduated high school with a 3.79 and left Morris with a 1.5. I was a very competitive athlete and left completely out of shape. My one bright spot at Morris was my boyfriend, Doug. He graduated from Morris in 2003, my last year there. We each moved to the cities where we continued to date. I tried going to a local community college, but hated that even more than Morris. Also during that time my Grandpa became very ill and passed away. I was even more upset than before and I began to think that maybe college just wasn't for me.