Reflection Week #3

This past week I really started to feel like a true college student. I was finally 18, had various assignments for all my classes, visited my old high school, and...played a board game for class? Diplomatic Risk was something I really wasn't expecting in college, and yet I had such a great time playing it! And the best part of the game? My team achieved our objective.

Eli, Holt, and I represented the Black Team and our objective was that we were Australian nationalists who had to unite the Australias, Siam, Indonesia, New Guinea, and India. Eli was our Head of State, Holt was our Diplomat, and I was the Treasury Secretary. Holt was the only one who'd ever played a full game of Risk before and so it worked out well that he was the Diplomat because he seemed to have a better grasp on what were the better strategies to employ and such. The three of us worked well together and were able to talk about all of our moves so that we were in agreement on how to proceed. We were actually able to achieve our objective through mostly diplomatic channels, only attacking during one turn. While I didn't really know what to expect during this game, it was really fun and helped me get closer with the other Global Scholar students. I think board games really bring out the competitiveness in people and, in a way, show their true selves, and I really liked getting that window into my peers' lives.

Seeing people in a new way was something that I also experienced on Tuesday when I went to visit my old high school. I was a student aide for my program in high school and so the head of that program asked me to come back to speak to senior parents during their "Parent Night" event. Since I'm so close and wanted to see my teachers again, I said yes and that's where I was Tuesday night. It was quite possibly one of the weirdest nights of my life. Being back in my old high school brought back a lot of feelings and reminded me of how much I miss it, but also how much I've grown. Walking the halls reminded me of how familiar it all was and yet how strange it is now that I'm not a student there anymore. Talking to my teachers reminded me of all the support I had over the years and still have, and that's something I know will stay with me forever. 

After the event, I ended up having dinner with four of my old teachers—my sophomore English teacher (and head of the program), my sophomore AP Government teacher, my junior AP World History teacher, and the new sophomore Journalism teacher who I never had but have become friends with over the last two years. Engaging with them in such an informal way and talking about college but also their lives was such a different experience and gave me the wake up call that I'm actually in college. It's time for me to move on from things I've held onto from high school and really embrace this new chapter in my life. It will definitely be interesting to see where this new journey takes me!