The first year of college has come and gone, and I’m so excited to be starting my second year at Northwestern University.

To follow along my new series “Sophomore Spotlight”, go to menu > Life Chapters > Sophomore Spotlight.

What you can expect for this upcoming series of blog posts:

• What college is like after the initial hype wears off
• Finding/picking majors
• Getting more involved with student groups, and focusing on quality over quantity
• Apartment life with Lisette
• Food recipes/reviews over on my food blog, Cat the Critic
• Combination of blogging + journalism, under the “Journalism” category

About “Freshman Focus”

The first year of college saw the ongoing series of blog posts deemed Freshman Focus.

My first post conveyed expectations I had before even reaching campus. Soon, Freshman Focus articles started to reflect on my first impressions, including disappointments I felt about making friends and the refreshing feeling of seeing my family again for Family Weekend.

One of the most popular articles I wrote under this section touched on my very honest and brutal opinion about the Greek system at NU, and around the country.

Towards the end of the academic year, I ruminated about how being around different people in a different place had left me different.

About “Bye High School”

Bye High School is my senior year collection of bitter qualms and sincere realizations about leaving Atlanta, handling college applications and decisions, and overall impressions of college.

My favorite post was a monologue illustrating the haunting and crazy thoughts going through a senior in the middle of the college process. I also enjoyed crafting my bucket list for my second semester completely 360’ing my general attitude towards life.

I felt most at peace, however, writing my reflection post that finally reconciled all of the insecurities and doubts I had about myself in high school, that resulted in me being much more optimistic about the future.

About “To Debaters”

These life chapters stemmed from my overwhelming emotions that came from being apart of the high school debate community.

For the outsiders that will never know first hand how much this activity has influenced my life, I wrote about why policy debate was not just a team activity, but a lifestyle.

For those who couldn’t understand why I spent 7 weeks of my summer stuck in college classrooms and university libraries doing research, I said, “There’s so much more to it than that” in my debate camp reflection article.

In the height of my career, I wrote “8 things I have to say about debate“, which turned out to be the most popular article. It was shared (to a very little extent) throughout the community and even made its way onto a debate forum website, mainly because a lot of people seemed to identify and relate to what I wrote.

As senior year drew to a close and I had to make a decision about whether or not I would continue this activity into college, I started to think about what I’d learned from my involvement and if it was worth pursuing once leaving my high school. It was a story about how I joined and what it turned into for me and how much it changed me. It was an emotional roller coaster, to say the least.