Sam Warren, 2015 graduate of Scarborough High School, received several scholarships at graduation.
One was from the Kiwanis. Another was from the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame. Two were from Libby-Mitchell American Legion Post 76. One was the Phillip T. Martin Memorial Baseball Scholarship.
The last two required the winner to submit his college academic transcript after the first semester to receive the scholarship, and also required an essay from the winner on how his first semester at college went.
Sam is a freshman at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The following essay, entitled “How I survived my first semester of college,” runs this week in place of a column written here weekly by his father, Dan Warren. Dan is on vacation this week. He asks that readers ignore the joke he made in the essay about his father!):
When I was applying to college, it’s safe to say I didn’t really consider the degree of difficulty of coursework or classes. Dining hall options, campus scenery, and laundry prices were of much higher regard to me. When I arrived to Trinity College, I slowly began to realize the importance of what I had overlooked before.
At Trinity College, each freshman is required to take a first-year seminar, regardless if it has anything to do with his/her prospective major. This is typically known as the hardest class a freshman takes, but I figured it would be a breeze because it was similar to courses I had taken in the past.
When I arrived in the fall, I expected at least a week to get acclimated to the campus and accustomed to all of my classes. I at least expected to have a “Syllabus Week” that my friends had at their universities. All of my premonitions were excruciatingly false and, to my dismay, the professor of my first-year seminar assigned a research paper on our second day of class.
I had not thought it would have been possible for me to not be able to handle my coursework in college. After all, I had relative success during high school with AP courses, so I figured the workload would be fairly comparable. I was sorely mistaken. Forget down time, with all of the orientation activities going on around campus, my first couple of weeks at school were as busy as ever. I actually didn’t even take advantage of Trinity’s low laundry prices until after the first month of school. Yet, I endured the struggles of my transition from high school to college. Moving forward, I won’t underestimate any class at my university any more.
Throughout the rest of the semester I slowly began to get accustomed to the college lifestyle. But I couldn’t have done it without the support of friends, my family, and especially my father who sent me packages at least twice a week (you can stop now, Dad, I’m doing fine).
I think everybody has their own fair share of struggles during their time in college, but everybody’s struggles are unique. With the right support group and the right mentality, anybody can find success in college no matter how challenging your time has been.
Looking back at my successes and failures during my first semester, I can already see how I’ve grown as a student, a friend and as a person. Now I can finally reap the fruits of my labor from first semester and enjoy the dining hall options, my campus’ scenery, as well as the low laundry prices.
Dan Warren lives in Scarborough.
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