Every time I walk onto the campus of Pearl River Community College, I’m always reminded of one thing, my first semester at the University of Mississippi.
After graduating high school, I went straight to Ole Miss.
When I first visited the campus, I fell in love and knew I didn’t want to go to school anywhere else.
I was a good student in high school, mostly made A’s and graduated 13th in my class. Back then, my classmates and I were very competitive and quite a few people tied for top positions.
But that didn’t matter to me. I was one of the first recipients of Ole Miss’ Luckyday Scholarship, which paid for more than half of my college education. I thought I was set.
Well, during my first semester at Ole Miss I took some of my basic courses, which included political science and biology, two subjects I do not care for.
During high school, I didn’t really study for tests and I’m not sure why.
Well, studying for college level courses is a whole different ballgame, one I wasn’t prepared for.
For the first time in my life, I earned two Cs. As someone who always prided herself on earning good grades, I was pretty devastated.
I started college in 2001 and I tried to blame the low marks on the affects of my grandmother’s death or the events of September 9, but in reality I knew the real underlying problem.
I’m not here to say Bay High School or teachers were not good, they were. But I never learned proper study techniques, even in some of my college prep classes.
As I look back, I realize I should have considered attending a community college first. My dad is a proud graduate of PRCC and tells me so every time I tell him I covered a story there.
I also received a scholarship to PRCC, but I had it set in my mind that I wanted to go to the big university in Oxford.
Although I don’t regret the choices I made, I feel going to a community college like PRCC would have better prepared me for a university setting.