One More Semester to Go Before Tokyo!

With all of my finals completed today and my third semester in college has concluded, I can say that it definitely wasn't my best. I struggled with a lot of personal things which caused me to fall behind in my academics a bit and I feel a bit disappointed in the grades that I got, but they weren't unexpected. I took on an academic workload greater than ever before, which I anticipated and looked forward to because I enjoy being challenge. However, with my new job at Klein Global Opportunities, the study abroad office for the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple, ultimate frisbee, and intramural volleyball, it got to be quite tiresome.

I took on 6 classes this semester, the average number I had taken previously, but I didn't have at least one leisure class like I did my previous two semesters. I felt like I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to in a few classes, but others left me so grateful for taking them. During one of my heaviest weeks, my laptop broke and I had to go upstairs to the computer lounge in my apartment to do work, which I found to be quite difficult to focus in. I pulled more all nighters this past semester than I did at all my whole first year of college and I slept through half an hour of a morning shift for the first time ever.

I struggled finding motivation throughout the semester more than ever with my academics. I knew that this was highly due to the personal issues I was struggling with and sought for another therapist at Tuttleman Counseling. The one I had last year was amazing, but she was a fellow and unfortunately left in August. The process was extremely difficult to find someone because Tuttleman initially referred me to outside practices due to my preference for long-term therapy, but no one had times that worked with my schedule. About 3/4 the way into the semester, I was finally able to have a session and things got much better for me from there and I am very hopeful that it will continue to ease things throughout the spring semester as well.

Another area I fell short in this semester was that I was not as committed to ultimate frisbee as I would have like to be due to my job and workload taking up more of my time than I had hoped. This meant that I could not attend as many tournaments as I would have liked to and I also missed practices often throughout the semester, but I made sure to go at least once a week and work out on my own to make up for this.

On a more positive side, my intramural volleyball that almost didn't exist if I didn't have one more girl ended up winning not only Temple's intramural league but the Philadelphia City 6 extramural tournament! Although these games did provide stress as some points and they were often very late at night, it was all worth the struggle. I didn't know what to expect my first year of playing intramural volleyball with half of my team being people I just met, but it was an incredible experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Now that we've moved on to the happy things, I love my new job and I am excited to get back to it in the spring! My bosses and coworkers are such incredible people and I feel so lucky to be a part of the Klein GO team. Helping people is something I have a great passion for and being a Peer Advisor allows me to do just that! I was able to improve my public speaking through class visits, which I am extremely grateful for. As well as this, I love getting to use my creative side with blog posts, social media content, and more! Not only is the work fun, but the community is the best part. Like I said before, everyone I work with is so great and supportive of each other. This semester, the office has become a place where I feel like truly belong. Even though I was struggling with my academics, work was always something I looked forward to.

In addition to this incredible job opportunity, I also applied to become a Conversation Partner at the Student Success Center. I have had my eye on this job ever since I knew I was coming to Temple because I am always seeking ways to improve my language skills and/or help others with theirs! Conversation Partners help people in target languages that they are fluent enough in to help other students as well as international students practicing English as a second language. This was also extremely appealing to me since many international students are Mandarin speakers and I would be able to help them further by directly translating words or phrases from Mandarin to English to better improve their conversational skills. I know that it may seem crazy to apply for a new job after hearing my feelings of underperformance this fall, but I anticipate my workload to be much less next semester and I know that my job at Klein GO won't be nearly as successful because I have a full semester working there under my belt. Guess we'll just have to wait to find out!