{"id":34410,"date":"2018-04-10T15:17:44","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T19:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=34410"},"modified":"2018-04-10T15:17:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T19:17:44","slug":"lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2018\/04\/10\/lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"At the end of each school year, I like to reflect on the biggest challenges I faced and all the things I learned throughout the semester. While my first year was really good and my second year was really bad, I think third year has been a mix of the two \u2013 something in between. Not necessarily mediocre, but not stellar, either. There have been moments of total joy (like finding out I was chosen to be next year\u2019s co-president of my favourite club) as well as really hard, sucky things, such as undergoing the healing process after a really rough summer.\r\n\r\nIn my three years at U of T, spring and the end of the term has always held a significance for me \u2013 not because of exams, but because of the things that were going in my personal life each April. In first year, April held a lot of joy and excitement; in second year, it was marked by pain. This year, again, it feels like something in between\u2026 not exactly joy, but nothing like last year\u2019s sorrow. Remembering to hold both things in tension has made me really sentimental about this time of year. Nonetheless, I\u2019m looking forward to the summer and feeling optimistic about the future.\r\n\r\nIf there\u2019s anything I\u2019m proud of after all my adventures in getting active this year, it\u2019s my persistence. I tried out some dancing that made me really uncomfortable. I got better at soccer and at running. I improved my eating habits and developed a more active lifestyle. Along the lines of what I mentioned above, I strove towards healing, even when it was hard.\r\n\r\nOutside of the whole active living thing, I took a seriously difficult creative writing class this year that felt, many times, like it was going to end me. In the beginning of the year, I cried after class each week and dreaded going to class for the whole day leading up to it. When I turned in my final project, my professor told me that the ability to get up after getting repeatedly knocked on my butt will serve me well in life and will especially help me in my career as a writer.\r\n\r\nIf you\u2019re reading this, be proud of you. This semester or this year may have sucked, but you made it out alive. You\u2019re a student at one of the best universities in Canada, and you\u2019re rocking it. That\u2019s something to be proud of!\r\n\r\nWhat did this year teach you? Tell us in the comments!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nAt the end of each school year, I like to reflect on the biggest challenges I faced and all the things I learned throughout the semester. While my first year was really good and my second year was really bad,&hellip;\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2018\/04\/10\/lessons-learned\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Lessons Learned&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2018\/04\/10\/lessons-learned\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Lessons Learned&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":333,"featured_media":34411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,62,67],"tags":[12330,193,23821,12768,25555,25556],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34412,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410\/revisions\/34412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}