End of the year!

As my freshman year comes to an end, I have much to be thankful for. I am thankful that I was able to stay at Russell Sage and not drop out. At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it through the long nights of studying, writing papers, and the worst: the darkroom. Oh, the darkroom! I have to say that taking Photography 1 wasn't what I expected. I walked into that class thinking I was going to excel right away, but boy, was I wrong. I didn't know how to use a film camera (one of the requirements in the class) and I also didn't know what exposure, aperture, ISO, or shutter speed were. For the first half of the class, I struggled to make good prints and spent up to two hours in the changing room trying to get film on the reels. By the second half, it's like I had an epiphany. Soon, I was making excellent prints and presenting them to a professor that was, what I thought, hard to please. Soon, he was admiring my work and I felt better. I think Photography 1 was the hardest class I've taken throughout my career as a student. I'm proud of my work, and I'm proud to say that I want to go on in Photography. The only other class I struggled through was English 101. I've only written one MLA essay throughout my high school career. Every week we were assigned an eight page paper. As a future Journalist, I often mix the Journalistic style of writing short paragraphs; this turned out to be a nightmare in English 101. However, I didn't give up, and I passed the class. I'm extremely proud of myself for following through with the hardest subjects and for staying in school.