This semester has been one of the best, and worst, semesters throughout my time in Wellesley. I’m not going to lie: adjusting back to this after studying abroad for a year has not been easy. Reverse culture shock is real. I lost touch with a lot of people, to the point where I felt like a first-year, but without the resources or drive to find my place. Nevertheless, I have met some amazing people and I have re-bonded with other people that I had not kept up with. I have been doing my best to go into the city as often as possible because life in the suburbs had started to get to me a little bit. All in all, despite not having the ‘best’ or ‘easiest’ semester, I would call it a successful one.
One of the things that made this semester difficult was my choice in classes. Going into this semester, I was not sure of how my credits from my study abroad would transfer. That’s how the system works at Wellesley: you don’t get the definitive credit amounts until the semester after you come back. This petrified me. I would never change my year abroad, but I knew I was cutting it close when it comes to credits. Over the summer, Wellesley received my Queen’s University Belfast transcript and updated my credits. In that report, it said I was receiving mostly 3/4 credits out of my classes, meaning that I needed to fulfil quite a few requirements and take more classes than normal to graduate. Therefore, my classes for this semester were chosen solely based on that, rather than basing them on what I was interested in. To make matters worse, my credits were updated halfway through the semester to full credits, meaning that I did not have to take a few of the classes I took.
While some of these classes were not my favourite, I feel like I am past them now. I should not speak too soon, as I still have finals to contend with, but I am able to see the good things a lot better now that I am past them. I met some incredible professors and Wellesley students that I likely would not have met otherwise. I did have some hard times, but I got through them… and is that not what matters?
Yesterday was my last day of classes. Somehow it worked out so that I would have quite a few assignments do on that day, so I have been a busy bee for a few days now to get everything done on time. In addition to the midterm essay and assignments, I also had a final presentation yesterday. Or rather, my group taught an entire 2.5-hour class. We already received our grades and are extremely happy with how it all went! There’s a lot of work that goes into preparing to teach a long college seminar: we had to do extensive research on the topic, pick the right readings (homework) for the class, come up with a lesson plan, and begin to work on our final paper, which will be about this entire experience. It required a few meeting per week and substantial efforts outside of those meetings. However, it is also extremely rewarding to know that we could put together a successful class.
I have to start working on my finals now, but I hope this update was a little bit more thorough and useful than the last couple ones. Good luck with exams, everyone!