Final Reflective Essay Honors Freshman Seminar November 25, 2013 The Evolution of a College Student From the

first day I stepped foot onto the University of North Carolina at Charlotte I feel like I have changed. At first when I arrived on campus I felt like I didnt not feel like I was actually going to college and four years of high school had already passed. But that quickly started to change as I started to meet people and got to know the campus better. As the semester went along and I got used to college life I saw myself evolve from an inexperienced college freshman to a seasoned one semester college veteran. The typical evolution of a college student involves hard classes, lots of essays, influential teachers, football games, all-nighters, community service, and plenty of packed/frozen foods. I experienced almost all of these in my progression as a college student (except maybe the frozen foods). But being in the honors freshman seminar class was probably one of the more important things I did during my first semester in college at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It helped me get a feel for what classes are supposed to be like and provided a great cushion for me between my two harder classes of the day. On Mondays I usually have a very uninteresting, and early, 8 am class and Honors Freshman seminar is a great relief from that class on Monday mornings. By taking this class I came one step closer to the complete evolution of a mature college student.

The next step in getting through the first semester of college is time management. This is something I had to teach myself through as I prepared for all my classes and all the work that goes along with the classes. In high school I was terrible when it came to time management. I was late for a lot of meetings, and did not plan appropriately and would be crunched for time almost every day. Having better time management skill also helped me get my priorities in order for college. Overall college helped me become better at time management, as I use my time more efficiently to evolve into a better student. The Wine to Water readings were one of the things that impacted my evolution as a college student. It brought out the community service side of me and I decided to take the Community service lab in my first semester. This entitled me to do 40 hours of service for the class in the Charlotte community. I wanted to make an impact in the community after being inspired by Doc Hendley in Wine to Water. He was able to help thousands of people all over the world, and I just wanted to make an impact in the community I was living in. By doing this in my first semester in college I was able get some great experiences around the community and was able to be involved more at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It helped me get involved in the Habitat for Humanity program here at Charlotte, and I was able to participate in the Homecoming build about a month ago. These experiences were just a few more parts of my evolution process to a better college student. Just as a humans evolved from primates I evolved from a recent high school graduate to a mature college student within a matter of a semester. But unlike primates I did not have millions of years to evolve and it had to be a relatively fast adjustment. I

had less than a semester to get adjusted to life and I feel as if I was successful in doing it. But at the same time it is still a work in progress, and I have another seven semesters to shape continually evolve. Your whole life is an evolution process and in college each semester, month, week, and day are just steps toward progression and evolution. There is always constant change as there is the evolution of humans. In the millions of years we have been evolving we constantly have changes to better adapt to our environment and lives. Then every once in a while there will be a drastic evolution to help us progress quickly and with as little challenge as possible. When humans eventually became homo sapiens it was a fast change that could have potentially been the end of the human race as we had known it, but we adjusted and survive today as arguably the most successful species of all time. In college that drastic first change is the first semester as a freshman. Everything hits you like a racecar coming at you at 100 miles per hour with the force of a 50 foot brick wall. So you evolve quickly to be able to catch up and that is what I have been doing for the last few months at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In the beginning humans started out as Australopithecus which was the animal that we stemmed from. That is the equivalent of my first day on Charlottes campus and when I had to find my way around and get used to living here. Then I officially spent my first day taking classes as a college student, who felt as if he was not ready for college. This part of the evolution process would be equivalent to homo habilis which was the first true human. The next step in the evolution process was when I survived until the midterm of the semester and was starting to get the hang of college in general. I realized the amount of work being in college required and the different things I had to do

to be successful in college. This phase in human evolution would be considered homo erectus because this was when human were able to control fire and get a grasp on technology. Finally as the semester comes to a close I am starting to feel like a more mature college student after nearly four months of the evolution process I am about a week away from finishing my first semester as a college student. I have weathered a lot through the semester and I am about to finish it once finals are over. I have yet to reach a complete evolution of a college student because I still have 7 semesters of college left, but in the end evolution is always a work in progress.