FRESHMAN JOURNAL
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Make yourself Uncomfortable

By Antoine J. Allen Jr., Syracuse University

A few weeks ago, while browsing through Facebook, I noticed something peculiar. One of my friends from high school had been tagged in a picture in which he was wearing a football pads, a helmet, cleats and a uniform with his college's colors. I was quite confused, as our high school did not have a football team, and my friend had never played organized football.

When I inquired about why he was wearing a football jersey, he said he had joined his school's club team. He was pretty excited to be playing for the team. He went to school with the intention of playing on the lacrosse team, but it didn't work out, and he decided to get involved with the club football team. After only going to a few practices, he became the starting corner. He entered school with specific plans but they didn't work out, and he had to adapt due to the new circumstances.

When I was first offered the opportunity to be a Wall Street Journal Freshman Journal writer, I was asked to answer the question: "How do you think the college experience will change you?" I thought that I was set in my ways and that I knew everything about myself but new classes, new friends and new experiences have led to new interests, new hobbies and a greater definition of who I am.

There have been many times where I found myself in situations that were foreign to me, but, although I was out of my comfort zone, I tried my best to become comfortable and embrace these new experiences.

It is important that we are able to adapt to situations that may initially be uncomfortable for us, because things won't always go the way we planned. I'm not saying that we should succumb to peer pressure and compromise ourselves, but we should be open to new things and experiences. Who knew that my friend would find happiness and success in something that he had never tried before?

In retrospect, my first semester of college was not everything that I expected it to be, but I wouldn't take back any of my experiences. For the most part, I enjoyed myself, and in the rare cases that I didn't enjoy myself, I learned some valuable lessons. I am looking forward to next semester and seeing what more I can learn about others and myself.

Previous Entries

December 2011: Playing Games

Just a short 10-minute walk from my residence hall is Archbold Gymnasium. On any given weeknight, this gym is filled with college kids dressed in sweats, shorts, T-shirts and jerseys looking to play a good game of basketball.

I frequently go to the basketball courts with people from my floor. After waiting around for quite some time, we usually end up picking up a few players that we don't know so that we can form a complete team of five.
           
Just the other day I went to the court in search of a game. The guy who would be playing the next game did not have a team and asked if we would play with him. Without any prior knowledge of this contender's skill level, we agreed to play. After a few minutes of play, we noticed he was quite adroit and a good asset to our team.
           
Although these games are very insignificant, we are generally very competitive. Many of us played varsity sports in high school and, as a result, are very serious about our sports. Aside from dealing with the already fierce aggression between teams, we also have to deal with the intra-team competition. We have to become knowledgeable about not only our own strengths and weaknesses but also the strengths and weaknesses of our teammates. I know what my teammates can and cannot do, and when new players are introduced to our team, I am as uninformed about their skills and abilities as they are about mine.

The biggest takeaways from my basketball experiences are patience and cooperation. It takes a lot to adapt to new surroundings, new people and new problems; but when that adaptation is finally made, there is usually a lesson learned in the process. Patience and diligence are two things that, when combined, no one can get in the way of and are bound to yield great results.

The second and much more significant thing that I learned is cooperation. Between group projects, study groups and living in a building with about 800 other people, I have experienced the challenges and rewards that can come from working with others.


November 2011: Time to Compete

It was Oct. 21 and clearly a football night at Syracuse. Excited fans flooded nearly every bar and restaurant in Syracuse's downtown shopping district, Armory Square, wearing their orange and blue proudly in support of their team.

Not only was it a football night in Syracuse, but it was family weekend. This made for a very busy night at Syracuse's football stadium, The Carrier Dome, which seats 45,265.

ESPN blogger Andrea Adelson favored West Virginia to win 38-20, and she was not alone in her prediction. Despite being the underdog, Syracuse upset West Virginia, 49-23. I would argue a correlation between the largest crowd since 2009 and the most points Syracuse has won by since 2003.

My mother attended the football game with me. When I walked out of my residence hall and got into her car, I was immediately taken back to two month's ago. It hadn't seemed like a long time, but my unfamiliarity with someone who I used to be so close to was a testament to my newfound independence. Something that I once viewed as emancipation had proven to be more of an abrupt conclusion of my childhood.

I spent the entire day after the football game with my parents. They were back to their old ways of telling me what I need to do, and once again I felt like a high school student. While attending a breakfast that the Dean hosted for visiting families, my parents tried to establish contacts for me, talk to my professors and essentially find people that would look out for me in their absence. I knew their efforts were well intended, but I felt that they were insulting my networking abilities, and ultimately, my ability to sustain myself independent of their guidance.

After their breakfast, my parents picked me up drove me around insisting that I get a haircut and buy warmer winter clothes, food and other dorm room necessities. Within a day of their arrival, they were gone, and I was back to where I was Friday afternoon.

My parents would stop at nothing to ensure that I am taken care of. My family wants to support me. They are my fans. They didn't mean to assume control of my every action or tell me of exactly what to do; they wanted to cheer me on. Their words of wisdom were meant to encourage me so that instead of just doing well, I would blow my competition out of the water, like Syracuse did West Virginia.

October 2011: Time to Compete

I had just finished my last class on Friday after a long, stressful week, but instead of retiring to my dorm room like my counterparts, I foolishly sought out even more responsibilities.
           
I walked into a house filled wall-to-wall with students, mainly freshmen. The walls were covered with posters and pictures. We were all shoulder-to-shoulder and our sweaty bodies had no choice but to be touching one another. We were all here for the same reason: We wanted to write for the campus newspaper.

This was a chance for the entire student body to read something that we created as well as an opportunity for us to get one-step closer our career goals. We were also there because many of us were told by publications at the internship fair that we had a few more years to go and we should try to start out with some of the campus publications. But this didn't appear to be a much easier process.

Everyone was herded into one room as disgruntled upper classmen gawked at the amount of interest that they had this year. The editors were somewhat enthusiastic about the number of new students interested in writing for the paper, but I knew that they were just as uncomfortable as we were.

We were determined. A few haughty freshman girls whined due to the lack of air conditioning, but for the most part, we knew our place. No one was willing to let their claustrophobia stand in the way of a possible job with the school paper.

The editors attempted to manage the chaos by dividing us into groups: news, sports, features, photo and design. I chose to attend the meeting for the design group first as it was the smallest group of students. The design editor made us aware of the application process for the newspaper and sent us on our way.

My next stop was features. I caught the tail end of the editors spiel and quickly made my way to the front to sign up for a story.

This experience taught me so much. Both sections of the newspaper I was interested in required interviews. One was an intimidating formal interview during which three editors questioned me about my prior experience, and the other was a mere article review that allowed the features editor to ensure I had an adequate sense of journalistic writing.

When I left high school, I had entered into a world filled with competition. Every college student thinks that he or she has achieved something by being admitted to the school of his or her choice, but that was merely the first step. I was in a room full of people who had done the same exact thing that I had done in getting into school, and now it was time for us to prove ourselves once again.

I felt like the whole college and career process is just a series of interviews to progressively eliminate those who are incompetent and propel those who are exceptional until there was only one man standing.

In elementary school, sharing and cooperation had been encouraged, and now I was learning that it's every man for himself.

 This fierce competition would take some getting used to.



September 2011: Nice to Meet You

I was exhausted.

I had spent the previous 24 hours saying goodbye to friends that I had known for
years. I packed my whole life into plastic bins, and tried to fit everything that I would need to live into my mother's Honda CRV.

I was finally going off to college. I knew I would need to take this leap of faith eventually, but it all seemed to be happening so soon. My childhood was officially over, and I would be embarking on a journey that could potentially determine how I would spend the rest of my life.

On the way to my first class, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people that I saw. As one of about 20,000, it was very easy to be lost in the crowd. This environment was so unfamiliar to me because I came from a high school with only about 400 students, and there were 63 students in my graduating class. I was used to knowing all of my classmates (whether I wanted to know them or not). I was now part of a significantly larger community that was not as tightly knit as the one that I had come from.

This setting, being so foreign to me, forced me to adjust to my new surroundings. In trying to adapt, I met a lot of new people. Some of my new acquaintances were local and some were from as far away as China.

During convocation, I sat next to a girl from Maine. After talking to her, we introduced ourselves to a group of three other students. At the conclusion of convocation, we decided we would all go outside and have our lunches on the quad.

None of us had met prior to this afternoon, but our lunch was very informative. Two members of the group learned they were from the same county, I learned the girl I had been sitting next to had once lived in Italy, and we all learned we had common interests. As our lunch ended, we were laughing with each other and making plans on when we would see each other again. We exchanged numbers and went our separate ways.

A little bit of amicability can go a long way especially in a setting where no one really knows anyone else. Although I have left many long established relationships with friends and family, there is always room to meet someone new. And even though I'll never meet all 20,000 students here, each introduction brings me one step closer.