Wrapping Up My First Semester

Hi, I’m Erica Moore and I’m about to finish my first semester here at RWU. These past four months have been an emotional roller-coaster for many reasons. Adjusting to the US system coming from another country was a lot harder than I thought. Initially, I strongly believed I was going to be able to make friends right away and that the work load wasn’t going to be too overwhelming. I quickly realized that was not the case. Making new friends was a challenge I definitely wasn’t expecting, since back home in Italy I made friends very easily. Here, I had to adjust to the different culture and, therefore, the diverse personalities that are present on campus. Fortunately, I was still able to make a small group of friends that I spend my time with during the weekends and occasionally during the week between classes. This also helped me get out of my comfort zone and start meeting new people, which was something I struggled with at first due to my initial shyness. 

Switching from high school to college was also another obstacle I had to conquer. The high school I use to go to back in Italy was pretty hard and the Italian school system in general in known to have a lot of material to go through. This, although, enabled me to have a very good preparation in multiple disciplines. Even though I had this “advantage”, I still struggled adjusting to a different schooling system, but with the help of my new friends and the people that work at RWU, I was able to figure out quickly how to adjust to college. 

Now that the semester is almost over, I can say that I have learned a lot of things: from adapting to a different culture to learning new things throughout the classes I attended. So far, my college experience here at RWU has been really life changing and has made me stronger and more mature both as a person and a student.