University of Iowa Top Questions

My high school experience was horrible. I carried so much shame around with me every day. Many nights I wished I would never wake up again. Their were so many sources of the shame: I was fat, I did not yet understand I am transgender and thought I was a failure for not understanding how to be a girl, and I performed poorly in school because of all this. Although I knew I was going to college, I had no clue what that would look like. The first thing I would do if I could connect with my 18 year old self would be to sit and listen. I would let myself rant and vent all the frustrations that bogged me down. And then I would hug myself because I so desperately craved physical contact with another human. Only after that would I give any advice. I would tell my young self, “It is going to be alright, but you first need to understand yourself. You need to let go of the self-hate and the confusion.” I would then silently hand myself a piece of paper with one word on it: “Transgender.”

Hi, myself. It's the last year in high school. It's time for you to prepare for college. I have a few advises for you, remember to do it. First, do not choose your major too fast, you could think about it. Ask everyone you think you could trust, see if they know anything about transfer. Do not try to do all things by yourself, you need help. Get prepared for the placement test, if you can get better grade, it's going to save your time. Be yourself, always try your best. Be friendly, you are going to meet some new friends. Apply for financial aids and registration as soon as possible. Find more about college, you need a lot of information, teachers can help you. Enjoy your senior year.

If I could go back and give myself advise about making an adjustment to college life this is what I would tell myself.......The first thing I would tell myself is find a career that I love a career that you would wake up and do for free. I would explain that we as humans were not put on earth to be unhappy and miserable but we were put on earth to be happy. The college journey will be a tough road ahead with road blocks and curves along the way but the journey is what molds us to the people we are today. I would stress to give 100{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of yourself to school work. Don't just go to school to get a degree but go to school to be the best in your field. Don't be afraid of success and most important don't let people before you that couldn't make it because the road to success was too hard for them. Your going to want to be successful more then you want to breath I would. Thats what I would tell myself If I could go back and guide myself to the future.

Without question the most important thing I would impress upon my younger self would be to continue my education. I graduated High School in 2001, attended college for one semester, got discouraged and left. That is the ONLY regret I have in my life. At the age of 29 with two children I decided to go back and learn the skills necessary to do what I have always wanted to do, computer programming and web development. I have been a self-proclaimed geek for my entire life and love tinkering with code. I’ve always wanted to do that for a living but never had the training or degree needed to be employed as a code monkey. Most people would find it boring, but the idea of going to work and sitting behind a screen geeking out on thousands of lines of code makes me smile. So, to my younger self I would say two things “Don’t quit on your education and dream, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are going to win the Super Bowl this year.”

With every decision you make, choose what makes you happy. The relationships you form with yourself and others are the most important things you have.

Advice that I would give myself as a high school senior would be to plan out your weeks and months ahead time. Doing so would allow you join some more clubs, take some pressure off of the academics and ulitimately just enjoy your time in college. You are at college to earn an education but at the same time you need to network with other people and begin to stabilize yourself for when you graduate. Finally the last and most important piece of advice I can offer would be to put in the work now so you can enjoy life later.

I would tell myself to buckle down even more than I was. I realize now that my lack of studying has possibly not gotten me prepared for the difficult course work ahead. I would tell myself that college will be a growing experience and that I should not fear the unexpected, but embrace it. College will be some of the best years of my life and I would let my younger self know that what people think of me in highschool will not matter when I get to college. I would tell myself to immerse myself more in clubs and activities in school so I can get to know more people and prepare myself for being in a new state without anybody I know.

The best advice I could give my high school self would be "be yourself." I found during my freshman year that I was being very shy and timid around others, which caused me to not make very many friends for over half of the year. I've always been quiet around people I don't know, but truth is, I'm a talkative, friendly person! I believe that being myself could have allowed me to make more friends and not get homesick so often. The last two months of school, I finally found a group of friends and I'm not afraid to be myself around them. By the end of the year, instead of crying to go home, I was crying because I didn't want to go home. Even though it sounds cliche, being yourself is so much easier than being someone you're not.

Dear High School self, I know your glad to be done with high school and it seems like its taken so long to get this far, but trust me when I say, this coming year is going to be the hardest school year of all. School has not always come easy to you, and I know you’ve had to work incredibly hard, especially your senior year, but what you’re going to face in the fall will change your perspective on all of that. Your going to find a passion in nursing that will motivate you to get through all of the exams, drug quizzes, finals, and clinical days. I advise you to remind yourself every day how much you love what your going to do and how it will help those in need, it’s the only way you’ll get through the next year. I would remind you to keep a level head and stay focused but you wouldn’t have gotten this far if you were not already doing that. All that really matters is remembering what your goals and dreams are, and being willing to work as hard as you can to achieve them.

To not underestimate the difficulty of college coursework. During high school I got straight A's without even studying but you cannot get by that way in college. It is competative and you must work hard from the start or you will spend the rest of your college career trying to pull your G.P.A. up.