McKendree University Top Questions

Pay attention! Yes, you are young, and life is fun, but you are wasting precious time that you will sorely miss. Pay attention to your teachers, right now you have it easier than you ever will again during your lifetime and they are trying to help. Quit worrying about boys, and your hair, and most of all what clothes you wear. Enjoy all your friendships, most of them will be scattered in a matter of months across the country like stars in the sky. Love your community with a geniune desire to be a part of it, it will always be a part of you. Listen to "old people," they're pretty smart. One thing about learning is you can never "un-learn" any of it so fill your head with books, lots and lots of books! You will do fine, and so will your peers, but dedication never comes easy, so do not take the shorter path it is longer than it seems in the end. Most of all enjoy your education, and meet new people, as many as you can! You are smart, and the only thing holding you back is you. Let go.

I would tell myself not to be afraid of change. Leaving home will be difficult, and being away from family is even harder, but learn to appreciate the time you have with your family. They will love you and miss you, and you will realize how valuable they are. There will be times where you will be so frustrated that you just want to go home and not do it anymore, but you will make it through it. Do not hold on to anything that does not make you happy, find the people and things that will! Get involved with lots of clubs and make lots of new friends that will always support you. You may feel out of place sometimes, but you have to be yourself, not someone you think other people will like. You will find what it is that makes you happy, just don't rush it. Let things happen, always stay strong and positive, take chances, make memories, and trust that everything will work out for the better. Change can sometimes be just what you need.

If I could go back in time and speak to my past self on the first day of her senior year, I would give her this piece of advice: cherish the friends you have now. My three close friends and I all swore that we would never let anyone or anything come between us. Nothing could separate us. What we never realized was that the thing that would drive us apart would be us. The sad truth is that we grew up. We went off to different schools and the little things that change you on a daily basis made us into different people. Gone were the care free and playful girls of high school. In their place are collegiate women that have different likes and beliefs than those girls. Although we still speak over break and keep in touch occasionally, we will never have the same friendship that we did our senior year. I wish that I had known that and been able to truly enjoy that last year of being so closely bound to each other.

I would encourage myself to join extracurricular activities. When I was in high school, I focused almost exclusively on academics. What I failed to realize is that a successful person is a well-rounded and informed individual. Knowing this now, I would have joined more clubs at my high school. I was in none my first year and only several my last three years. There was a specific club that I should have seized the opportunity to join and seriously considered participating in that dealt with animals and the world surrounding them. This and other clubs would have helped me expand my comfort zone, so that I could overcome my shyness. It would now be a great advantage for me to be comfortable speaking and engaging others in almost any setting. On a more personal level, I would have pushed myself to ride horses more consistently. Sadly, the barn that I began riding at in high school is closing down. While I have adequate horsemanship skills, I could have learned much more from my trainer. These experiences have taught me that you will have a limit to your opportunities and to take advantage of them while you can.

I would have visited more than one university instead of choosing one college as my choice its always good to have alternatives.

Go to McKendree!!

The most important advice I could give myself as a high school senior to ease into the transition of college, would be to establish good study habits. I have learned, as a college student, managing time wisely and putting forth effort is directly reflected onto course grades. I would tell my high school self to study hard, take good notes, and read assigned class material. I would encourage myself to take more advanced courses and challenge myself. I would advise myself to do my best in class and live up to the expectations of my teachers and my parents. I would also encourage my high school senior self not to take things like social status and high school drama so seriously because in a few short months those things will no longer matter. In fact, studying for finals and future professional outlook become more important, and those things that seemed important as a high school senior were just trivial. I would encourage myself and any other high school senior to strive to learn as much as possible, and to set goals and push to be the best. I would remind myself and others that knowledge is power!

If I was able to go back and talk to my self as a high school senior I would tell myself that McKendree is the right fit for me and I will love it. I would also say that I should think long and hard about if I truly would like to run in college because I seemed to just jump right into it with out thinking. Another statement I would make to myself is that I should not be worried that I will get bad grades in college and not to stress out about failing out as much.

Learn everything you can! Nothing that you learn is a waste of time. Sometimes it is not the facts you learn, but the process and outcome of your interaction in a learning environment that is most important. You will learn how to accept and how to give constructive criticism. You will learn to listen to others who see things differently than you. You will learn to respect and appreciate those who challenge you and ask you to challenge yourself. And sometimes it will be necessary to add up the score in your own mind, and say, the grade was not the most important thing; I did the best that I could. Enjoy the process! Have fun! Work hard and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment in knowing that you put not only time, but yourself, into your work. When you’ve had a class that has helped you to learn new things, to stretch your boundaries, and to grow, thank the teacher.

If I could go back in time to talk to myself as a high school senior, I would assure the younger me that I am making the right decision in what I am planning to pursue. There might be bumps and bruises along the way; however, I will be completely content in where this journey will take me. I would tell myself that there are adventures ahead but to take them in stride and with a smile. (Basically, I would not change a thing.) But of course, I would never do any of this because going back in time and talking to myself would cause a paradox and possibly a rip in the time-space continuum. Even sans time-rip, I would go mad thinking about how and when time travel was invented and why, of all places, would I return to my senior year of high school? Because, surely there are greater time periods to explore! To quote Doctor Who, "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."