The Secret to Being a College Student That No One Will Tell You

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Since being in college, I’ve taken on a whole new view of what the experience is, and I’ve concluded that being a college student is character development. The popular social media platform TikTok has thousands of viral posts about being “the main character,” and “romanticizing your life” all with edgy voice-overs and building music. And I think that by the end of college, I could absolutely curate one of those viral posts that show how much I’ve changed and made myself the main character in my world. 

I am now a junior at Ohio Northern University, and I can say with total confidence that I have dramatically changed within these past two years. My freshman year, I was still finding my groove, as most other freshmen are doing. I was independent already, but I was finally independent on my own, living in a space mostly my own, and navigating what I wanted to do next, on my own. At first, I had no clue how in the hell to do that. But then, the first semester passed, and I changed my major to one that I knew had money involved. It was heavily based in mathematics, which I have always loved, but I soon found out I was leading myself to a life in an office cubicle, with a calculator as my best pal. At the time COVID-19 was containing us all, so I knew that was not my best fit, but I also still didn’t know what was. 


Shortly after my first semester I started a job as a student worker for the university in the department of creating lecture videos, to tutorials, to information videos and formal addresses, and then to energetic promotional content. When I say I love it, I truly have no way to emphasize it more. It became my passion, and something I worked hard at every single day. Which led me to then change my major to Marketing, to learn how to better organize visual content that would reel people in. With each day working in this professional, motivated environment, I went from the shy, timid person who wouldn’t raise their hand to answer a question they knew the answer to in class, to a project manager, award recognized leader, and confident individual. 


Now that is some character development. Crazy what two years can do, not only to me, but nearly every other student too. It goes to show how much you can change for something that you truly want and that lesson can be applied to many areas of your life. So if you’re in college now, starting in the coming fall, or just leaving, reflect on how much you’ve grown, and if you haven’t- maybe consider that what you’re pursuing isn’t what you actually want. Then, take a leap of faith and maybe you’ll fly.





Thank you for reading! Check out some of my content here on the ONU Film Club YouTube channel. All episodes of The Roar and the Delta Zeta Recruitment video were filmed and produced by me.

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