ONU Blog: Junior Year Thus Far

 I am a Junior here at ONU. This means I have been here for what is going on my third year. I've done a lot here at ONU so far, not as much as I would've liked to in retrospect but at the time it felt like enough. I've seen the best this place has to offer and the worst, occasionally those two aren't far apart. But all-in-all, this has been some of the best years of my life thus far.

Freshman year was mostly a discovery period for me. Covid rules made this hard to grow as much as I wanted to, but I found my way through. I joined a fraternity which is something I never expected myself to do! I switched majors as well which allowed me to pursue more things in line with my interests.

Sophomore year was when I began to hit my first real stride. I moved in with my best friend, got more responsibility in my organizations and started a photography club. This year is when I started to gain some more confidence in myself and my choices as a college student. Talking to people became easier and I really fell into place with my friend group.

But then Junior year began with a rough start. My one best friend transferred universities and the other took a gap semester for personal reasons. I became an RA this year so I was already going to be alone in my room, but now I was lonely in my friend group. I still had my fraternity, but some of the older guys I became friends with began to graduate and the remining current members I wasn't as close with and I'm still working to fix that. One of my classes got cancelled and restarted two weeks into the semester which threw me for a loop. And finally, I am next in line to be leading my fraternity and many of the people I was going to rely on either have decided they no longer want to be on exec or have left the fraternity altogether for personal reasons. Things are looking up though, I'm getting help where I need and I'm making new friends and always growing. But life gets hard sometimes.

I don't know the point of this blog today. I think I just wanted to rant a little. If there is a lesson to be learned here, I would say it's expect the unexpected. Life changes and things won't always be perfect, so cherish the good times and roll with the punches when things go bad.