{"id":42276,"date":"2020-09-22T08:05:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-22T12:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=42276"},"modified":"2021-03-29T13:58:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T17:58:54","slug":"a-letter-to-my-first-year-self-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2020\/09\/22\/a-letter-to-my-first-year-self-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter to My First-Year Self"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Picture
A beautiful photo by Parin Joshi<\/a> as seen from the UofT Student Life Instagram Page<\/a>!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In these photos, you look happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep trying everything you can and everything you want. There\u2019s seemingly not a lot of time in the day but once you put yourself in whatever opportunities you want, you\u2019ll start to find a balance between school, (work), friends, family, and extracurriculars. And you\u2019ll do it, and you\u2019ll be glad you did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mostly, let yourself be and you\u2019ll grow a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no pressure, let yourself rest, that\u2019s when the growing will start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll have great ups (like being an editor for a university publication and going to Ottawa to shadow a senator) but you\u2019ll also have great downs (like adapting to the hundreds of pages of readings you\u2019ll be assigned each week and struggling with deadlines).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at the end of it all you can say you tried and were successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You found friends, a few you would grow exceptionally close to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will have created and forged boundaries and thus, discovered who and what was to be left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You would have excelled (not even by parental standards) but by your own, and you would have created your own standards to make up your own person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 18 years your family and your friends and everything you watched and everything you did made up who you are. But now you learn how to take that mold and form your own sense of self, becoming more than the body people observe growing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hello all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, congratulations on your first complete week of the semester, you\u2019ve made it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me introduce myself, my name is Laura, and I am the Access Us Blogger! In my posts, I\u2019ll be sharing my first-year experiences as well as how to navigate disability\/accessibility needs on campus!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little about me: I\u2019m in my second-year double-majoring in English and Cinema Studies with a minor in Creative Expression and Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often you can find me catching up on readings, writing poems when inspiration strikes at 2 am, and taking part on campus (like with my editing for Victoria's short fiction publication - Goose Fiction)! In my free time, I've been learning the guitar, journaling, and catching up with friends (most likely while watching or baking something).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Dogs
Here is one of the many reasons why campus is amazing: the dogs! They made walking across campus so much better.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I hope I can share with you what worked and what didn\u2019t, what made my year great, and how to do it for yourself \u2013 all through my stories. So stay tuned!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next week you\u2019ll be hearing from me about social interaction during first-year: how to navigate it, form friendships, and how to connect with classmates (or at least, what worked best for me).
Let me know if there is anything you\u2019d like to hear about! Just comment below \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n
\nIn these photos, you look happy. Keep trying everything you can and everything you want. There\u2019s seemingly not a lot of time in the day but once you put yourself in whatever opportunities you want, you\u2019ll start to find a…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “A Letter to My First-Year Self”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “A Letter to My First-Year Self”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":42291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[826,1,66,67],"tags":[475,9571,10896,337,286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42276"}],"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\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42276"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44620,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42276\/revisions\/44620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}