College part 1
For those of you who don’t know, I started college last fall at Florida International University!! I’ve always known I wanted to come to college here, my entire family has. But, I knew I didn’t want just to commute, come home and basically live high-school all over again. After somehow convincing my parents into it, and getting enough scholarship money, I was able to get a dorm on campus with my best friend. This was SUCH an exciting experience, and honestly I wish I could relive the vibes of my freshman year dorm again. I lived with my best friend, Allany and became super close with the other 2 girls in my suite. This was a huge jump for me though, I had barely ever been away from my family. I’ve been on a few group trips with out them but moving out felt so scary in a way. Obviously, I’m from Miami so I could kind of go home whenever I wanted to but, I’m always so busy with something that the entire month can go by and I won’t come home.
Living alone came with so many new responsibilities. Of course, the normal college student responsibilities like cleaning, making sure I’m eating, and turning in all my assignments in on time. But, I also had to be fully responsible for all my own epilepsy needs. So, now I was keeping track of all my meds, making my own doctor’s appointments, plus all my advocacy work totally independently. To be honest, I loved it. Independence has always been something I’ve craved since I was a kid. Being able to do whatever I want, whenever I wanted felt like a whole new level of freedom.
But, of course, college brings these fun, new experiences but it also brought stress. I started college as a pre-med behavioral neuroscience major. I love medicine, I’ve talked about it a ton on my previous blogs and how all I’ve ever wanted to do was be a pediatric neurologist. While in high-school, this seemed like the perfect dream, I soon realized that it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Once I got to college and was slammed with multiple labs and science courses at the same time, I was miserable. I was stressed all the time (like literally always), I was never proud of myself, and I was falling out of love with science. I was in a super competitive pre-med organization at the time, and honestly the enviroment was not for me. Throughout these feelings, I had to decide on whether I want to be miserable for 20+ years while I struggle to get my medical degree or lean into the thought that kept crossing my mind- studying public policy, and advocating as a career! I’m definetly going to make a seperate post about ALL the feelings I was having at this time, it was rough but I made it through and decided to switch.
My first month of college, I also joined a sorority! I have an entire blog about my recruitment and early sorority experience (with epilepsy of course) coming next Tuesday! I’ve never really seen people talk about having epilepsy while being involved in greek life. Still, I’ve met so many girls who also have epilepsy/seizures who are also enjoying their college experience. I’m really excited to touch more on this topic next week because it has been the highlight of my college experience so far.
Hope you enjoyed this surprise DOUBLE drop + the first official blog!!
xoxo,
sofi :)
