When I moved out of my family's home to a residence building at Thompson Rivers University (TRU), I did not know what to expect. I was an 18-year-old about to live on my own and was uncertain about the people, difficulty of classes, and overall lifestyle. I am nowhere near the same person I was on my first day at TRU. Moving to a new city, learning to take care of myself, discovering my passion, and being consistently disciplined to do well in school have shaped who I am now.
YEAR 1
The first year of university represents the most change I have ever experienced in my life. I'm not sure if I was ready to move out of my family's home after turning 18, but I was overwhelmed with excitement and I took the leap. Before starting university, my only priority was doing well in my classes, but that slowly changed. I began to meet such friendly people in my residence building and classes which made me feel a sense of community. I started to get into the habit of sticking to my own schedule and looking after myself in terms of grocery shopping, doing laundry consistently, etc. I was beyond nervous the first time I went grocery shopping on my own, but eventually, I enjoyed it quite a bit. At 18, going "head first" into living independently and balancing my university courses and friendships was a huge learning experience, but quite fun! I learned a lot in my first year, from the responsibilities that come with living on your own to discovering a new interest of mine in marketing. The end of this academic year is also when I fell in love for the first time. Since then, I've made so many happy memories with my partner.
YEAR 2
By the time second year began, the responsibilities of living on my own became second nature. I looked more into the Bachelor of Business Administration degree offered at TRU and was convinced that graduating in that program with a marketing major would allow me to earn my dream career. Little did I know that changing to this program would be nothing but painful. The mathematics, economics, and accounting courses I took did not complement my strengths. I could not graduate with a marketing major without taking the required mathematics-related courses, so I changed to the communications degree and planned to obtain a minor in marketing. This year was messy in terms of changing from the Bachelor of Journalism degree to the Bachelor of Business degree to the Bachelor of Arts, Major in Communications degree! In this year, I was devoted to gaining marketing experience outside of my classes. I did one volunteer social media position for TRU and one volunteer marketing position for an organization called Your Edu Connect. It was a busy school year but made me even more confident that pursuing a career in marketing is the right decision for me.
YEAR 3
Looking back at my third year of university, it was simply a year of strengthening my relationship with my partner and my studies at school. My partner and I moved into our first apartment and continued to look after our kitten Kobe who we adopted at the end of my second year at TRU. In this year, the workload in my classes intensified because I was now taking upper-level courses. Although I was still taking some required courses for my degree, I was able to take a few marketing courses I enjoyed and perceived as valuable for my career. The completion of my third year was the end of me taking classes in-person at TRU as I transferred to the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) for the fourth year of my studies.
YEAR 4
Ever since I started my fourth year of university, I've been wearing "graduation goggles". Since September 2019, it has been surreal to know that my university experience was coming to an end. My life has revolved around school for over fifteen years, so the thought of having my everyday life not consist of studying, writing essays, and preparing for class presentations was strange. The end of my university experience is not at all what I anticipated. Asides from not expecting to graduate during a pandemic, I did not expect to consider graduate education. Knowing that I want to earn a career in content marketing/branding drove me to apply to an amazing master's program at the University of Illinois. Upon receiving an acceptance letter to the program, I was set on taking the program. However, realizing that I can learn potentially just as much from a marketing job in a workplace has lead me to pursue full-time employment. With my bachelor's degree and the completion of three marketing internships, I believe I can eventually reach my professional goals.
I have ideas in my mind of what I want my life to be like in the next few years and long-term. The main piece of information I have learned since being a university student is that life is unpredictable. You can research and create a plan for yourself and have everything change within weeks, days, or even minutes. Upon graduating high school, I would have never guessed that I would graduate with my specific degree, be pursuing a marketing career, and have met the man I will spend the rest of my life with. I was nervous to be close to graduating and potentially never being a student again, but I'm excited for what is coming next in my life and believe it will be nothing short from great adventures and memories.
Since this is my last blog post, I want to say thank you to those of you who have been reading my blog since I graduated high school, started university, or even recently! I've enjoyed creating content and excited to look back at it in the coming years.
