Your First Year

Good morning, afternoon or evening. I’m not really sure when you are reading this, but for me writing this it is 12:05am. I guess that makes it tomorrow.

I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Andrew Letson, but everyone calls me Andy. I’m 23 years old, a senior at UWSP (graduating in December!) and am working on a Bachelor of Arts with majors in Political Science and Public Administration/Policy Analysis. When I am done here I want to attend graduate school and work on a Masters of Public Administration. Ultimately I want to be a City Manager or a County Executive. Right now I’m just a student, much like you.

While it has only been a short five years since I was in your shoes as a recent high school graduate sometimes it feels like ancient history. But, trust me; I know exactly how you are feeling right now. You are probably both excited and nervous to be starting college, especially if you are like me and are going to a school without many of your high school classmates. Even if you are coming to UWSP with many of the same people you graduated with the next four, five or six years are going to be some of the best of your life.

Over the next couple of months I will be writing about leadership. You’ll be able to read about my experiences and hopefully be able to learn from them.

Today I want to write about the challenges of starting college. I was fortunate when I came to college for a couple of reasons. The first was as a kid I was involved in boy scouts which allowed me to be away from home for weekends now and again. Also between my junior and senior years of high school I joined the Wisconsin Army National Guard and I had to go off to basic training for three months before I started college. Both of these experiences made it much easier for me to be away from home. I was very fortunate to have that independence. I know this isn’t always the case with college freshmen. I was also fortunate because I could continue my high school job here in Stevens Point. This helped me maintain some sort of stability and structure my first semester in school.

The downside was I started school in January. When I moved into the Residence Halls most people had already established their groups of friends and it was difficult for me to fit in. During this semester I focused more on school and work than on meeting people and getting involved. Looking back I think this was a big mistake. I’m not saying it’s not important to focus on school or work, but you need to make time to get involved and meet some new people.

After my first semester probably the best thing that could have happened to me did, I was deployed to Iraq for a year. Now you may be saying to yourself, “Self, why was this the best thing to happen to Andy?” Let me tell you, a year in Iraq gives you a lot of time to think (especially with the job that I had). I realized that I was hurting myself by not getting involved and meeting new people. When I came back in the fall of 2006 I did a complete 180. I joined three student organizations and tried to meet as many people as I possibly could. Although I didn’t live in the Residence Halls anymore, I enjoyed being on campus more and frankly my grades were better because of it.

I did notice something about other freshmen in my classes. There were some people who I would talk to in class and occasionally hang out with outside of class who went home every single weekend. Some of them went home for work, others for a significant other, but some because they just wanted to see their friends from high school. While it is a good thing to maintain those friendships you need to ask yourself, do you want to be someone who has graduated high school and moved on with life, or do you want to be that person who never really graduated? I chose the latter path and frankly am much happier because of it.