Freshman Year

     As I have mentioned so many times before, my undergraduate college career is ending very soon. So I have decided to reflect on my college experience year by year throughout the next few weeks. It will be hard to put one year in a blog post, so I will do my best to not keep it too long and boring. I am going to go ahead and jump into Freshman Year:    
     About March of my senior year in high school, I decided I was not going to play volleyball in college and I was just going to attend Georgia Southern because I loved it so much. A month or so later, my club team played in a volleyball tournament called the Big South Qualifier in Atlanta. It was there I met the coach at that time, Nicole McCray, and the rest is history. I came in with 8 freshman, all of us so nervous because we had heard coach was "tough" but did not if that physically, mentally or emotionally. Turns out, it was D: all the above. 

This was our first "hang out" as a team. From top left: Sarah, Flavia, Laura Beth, me, Gorana, Jenn, Christy, Biannca, Michelle, Mae.

   This group of girls, plus some, went through so much this season. It was definitely draining, but I would say we all learned a whole about ourselves. Saying that it was a tough year would be an under statement, but I would not have traded it for anything. 

      This was the "Fantastic Four". Me, Marissa, Christina, and Sarah. We all planned to live together our sophomore year, but Marissa transfered to University of Maryland and Christina transfered to Tennessee State. And Marissa does have posters of Guitar Hero and Rock Band on her wall. 

    As a freshman, my coach gave me the option of living with teammates or someone of my choice. My best friend from high school (Alicia) was also attending Georgia Southern so we decided to live together. I could write on and on about our time living together, but then again those times may had only been fun/hilarious to us. We lived in a standard dorm-that was 40+ years old-called Winburn, and it was quite the experience. We were the last people to live there, so we got to do whatever we wanted to the room. 

      So we decided to go to Wal-Mart late one night, and paint our room blue. This was us mid-paint. Funny story about this: it took 8 hours to paint our room, and I had a game the next day. Due to the fumes/late night, I slept through my alarm. We had our pre-game meal the next morning at I-Hop, which is why we were 10-21, and my coach called me and asked where I was when I didn't show up on time. As her phone call woke me up out of a dead sleep, I told her the quickest lie I could think of; my car battery died. She never found out and I never got punished, therefore our blue room was totally worth it. 

     The final product! And yes, we slept with our beds side by side. And my desk was on the opposite side of Alicia's and sometimes we would get so distracted when we studied we would pull out the pink curtain (which was our closet) so we couldn't see each other. Then we would make paper airplanes with notes on it and send it to each other over the curtain. Yes that really happened. 

    I would sometimes nap before practice and poor Alicia would come home during the day when it was bright and sunny out in order to find our room pitch black and me napping. I can still picture her throwing her head back and stomping to her desk in disappointment. I was also an early bird and she was a night owl, so much of our time in our room was trying not to wake each other up. 

     You would think living with your high school best friend in the smallest living quarters when you have the complete opposite schedules would break your friendship, but it did the exact opposite for us. In that entire year, we never had one fight. It was such an awesome time, but Alicia's heart was set on UGA. So she transfered her sophomore year. 

For the most part, this was the crew our freshman year. Lots and lots of time spent together.

     If I were to sum up my freshman year in two words, it would be Learning Experience. I learned so so much about myself, others, school, volleyball, everything! I would say the transition from high school to college went pretty smoothly for me, although I did gain 14 pounds. That was partly due to the heavy lifting, but the Ben and Jerry pint-nights didn't help. It's so fun to reflect on how Gods hand was moving in my life without me even knowing it at the time. His plan is perfect, and at this point I was so wrapped up into my life I didn't even realize he was there. He definitely had my back this entire year and I am so grateful for that.