SCSU senior reflects on her past years

Jen Hoffer – Sports Editor

As I prepare to enter my last year as a college student, numerous thoughts jumble around in my head. Scared, excited, nervous, and ready? Yeah, ready.

Over the past year I feel like I’ve grown so much as a person and have really grasped what I want to do with my life. I want to be a sports journalist. I’ve known this since sophomore year of high school. Pretty unbelievable, huh? I’ve grown so comfortable and confident in my work year after year during my time here at Southern.

I’ve grown close with my guidance counselor and the professors in the journalism department.

It’s good to know I’ve built that relationship with them knowing I have them to help me out when I go out in search for jobs.

I started out as a sports writer for the Southern News, and now I’m the Sports Editor this year. I’m falling more and more in love with what I do, and just thinking that I’ll get to do this for the rest of my life just makes me more anxious to get started. A good anxious though.

But there is, of course, another side of me that is nervous as ever to go out into the work world on my own.

That’s what high school and college has set us up for, for the real world; to go out and make a name for ourselves. There comes a time where we can’t have someone else be holding on to our hand anymore. We need to be able to go out and take the challenges we’ve faced and the lessons we’ve learned and bring them with us, making a life for ourselves.

I don’t want to just rant on about the academic part of my college career, because the bonds I’ve made with my peers, who have turned into friends, and professors who have also turned into friends are just as important.

College has not always been an enjoyable experience for me though. I struggled finding my way my freshman year when I attended Quinnipiac University. It was upsetting when I got there and found myself to be unhappy. I had made up my mind sophomore year of high school that Quinnipiac would be the school where I grow and discover what I want to do with myself.

It was the transition to Southern that happened to be the best move for me. I found friends at Southern, and I found myself.

I’m only 21; I have so much to learn and so much to experience beyond college. But if there’s anything I learned and really took away from my years in high school and college, it’s creating that bond and relationship with your friends, professors, janitors, or counselors.

The grades and work lead you to that finish line of college and high school but it’s those relationships and bonds that you make that really help you get through those years.

So I leave college with my family, friends, peers, and professors to thank and whom I will always hold dear to my heart for guiding me to create a new world I’m going to make for myself, a new world all seniors leaving are going to make for themselves.

The rest of my story is unwritten. So it’s my time to go out and write it.