Ivans Domain

This fall I decided to move down to DC from New Jersey, with two of my friends from high school and a total stranger that we met on the Georgetown class of 2024 Facebook. College is obviously a big step for everyone, but it seemed particularly intense this year. A year that sort of lacked much normalcy. In most cases, someone will graduate high school, and if they decide to attend college, then they will move into a dorm on the school campus, and take a sort of baby step into adulthood. In this case, me and my 3 roommates skipped that middle step and went straight into living alone. No dining plan, no RA’s, not really much of anything. Although this could sound great to some people, a place to live with no rules, it was definitely daunting at first to me. I found myself anxious by the extreme responsibility that having a house consisted of. We had to be sure to buy groceries, budget our money, keep the house clean, stay out of trouble, pay the bills on time, and lastly be sure to not break anything. Not that this is not required of those college students who live in a dorm, but it is definitely required on a bit of a smaller scale.

As the semester went on, I learned how to balance the responsibility of the house, with school work, and extracurriculars. Although I moved to DC only knowing a few people, I was able to meet various different people from vastly different places than me. This for me, was one of the coolest experiences of my fall semester. I was able to meet people from all over the world and all over the United States. It was something that I never experienced before and was extremely grateful for. In addition to online class, I spent a lot of first few weeks in DC playing soccer. That is actually where I met quite a few of my friends from the fall.

In conclusion, I would say that I had an enjoyable first term in DC and was able to make the most out these rather unfortunate circumstances. However, I am very excited and optimistic for a time when I can live in a dorm on campus and have the whole Georgetown student body and class of 2024 there.

Throughout the semester I kept a gratitude journal which really helped me to stay grateful and keep things in perspective during my first semester. I decided to do two logs per day, one in the morning and one before I went to sleep, I found that this method was ideal because I had two 5 minute periods in the day when I could reflect and think about all that I am grateful for. Something as short as 5 minutes still suffices as a long time to be able to relax and put different things into perspective. I also found that when encountering an issue or dilemma of sorts, I was able to take this time when thinking about all that I was grateful for and place this dilemma that I was facing into a category of whether or not this was a real problem or just a frivolous one.

Most of the time I was grateful for my family, my friends, the school that I go to, my teachers, my self, and my house. But sometimes I was grateful for other things, my phone so that I could facetime my family, my stove so that I could cook dinner, playing soccer to help deal with stress. It was a wide array of things. Through this experience, I learned that I can be grateful for anything. Literally anything can help me achieve a goal, either small or large, and I in turn should be grateful for that.

For class we also had to monitor our sleep schedule for 3 weeks. When I first came to DC I wanted to focus on my physical well being so I bought a Fit Bit to try and avoid the Freshman 15. The Fit Bit also tracks sleep so I was able to see how long I would actually be sleeping for when in bed. After tracking my sleep for 3 weeks, I was very surprised to that I only averages 5 and a half hours of sleep each night, but would be in bed in restless states of sleep for 7 and a half hours. So for about 2 hours each night, I would think I am sleeping but really not recharging my battery at all. Obviously I was a bit concerned to see that I was only sleeping 5 and a half hours, but did not know what to do about it. I was busy with school work and friends, and I figured sleep was not of the most important. Until I got sick and realized it was probably because I had not slept alot.

In conclusion, I learned that I need to try and sleep for longer because I know that my body has a tendency to get restless sleep which I could try to avoid.

The summer going into my senior year of high school, I took an online psychology class by Dr. Martin Seligman about the Power of Positive thinking and remember becoming interested in his ideas on how to be happy. When we started talking about Positive Psychology in Flourishing, I knew that the ideas sounded familiar but could not decide from where I had heard them before. I started to do some research and found out that Martin Seligman is the founder and Positive Psychology and found it particularly interesting and ironic that his ideas were one of the topics of our flourishing class.

The biggest takeaway that I had from Positive Psychology both inside of class and from my time spent on the online course was Seligman’s emphasis that he put on sticking to the positive thoughts that come to mind and not giving in and accepting focusing on the bad. It was interesting to hear about how in todays society our brains are really sort of wired to focus on the negative thoughts and ideas that come to mind, for example, in the online course, Seligman referenced a study which was done with a group of students who were asked to take a 10 question test. Of those students, most received a score of a 9/10 which by all means is considered a good score. However, when asked about their results, all students focused on the 1 question that they got wrong, and not the 9 questions that they got right. Although this initially seems frivolous or of little importance, the importance of this comparison becomes much more clear when applied to other facets of everyday life. If a person has 10 things happen to them in a day, and 9 are good, and 1 is bad, people tend to focus on the 1 thing that happens to them which is bad. This creates a world where a person only really takes note of the bad stuff that happens, which will inhibit that person from being happy.

Seligman urges people to change the way they think and focus on all the good that happens around us, and not let a few seconds of bad harm our attitudes too much.