Life's Changes

"Life's Changes"

My second semester of college was a learning tool for life. Attending college and being away from home helped me mature as a person. The immaturity of my younger years has passed, though it leaves behinds so many grand memories. In the past year, I have dealt with so many of life's trials and tribulations that I know I must succeed. Many people take life for granted, thinking that we as humans are here just to have fun. Maturity and wisdom vividly describe my second semester at Tennessee Technological University. With college and basketball keeping me occupied, I know that I will never lose focus on the goals that I have in tact.

Maturity, in my opinion, is hard to come by in younger people today. People curse, put their life in danger, or find trouble with the law just because of peer pressure and to be "cool." During first semester's Christmas break, I partied and hung out with my high school friends as usual, only this time I ran into trouble with the police. Fear of losing everything that I was currently working for, my college degree and basketball, made me change immediately. No longer was I worried about being cool or doing certain activities just because others participated. I knew that I had work to do. The night when trouble found me, I should have been arrested. I committed the crime, but I was granted a second chance in life and this one will never be taken for granted!

Wisdom is a unique character trait that is inherited through age and experience. My age, in years, is still very young so experience was my method of inheritance. My first semester at Tennessee Tech was a great one, but a little too great. I was the type of student that loved to party and have a social life first, and worry about school second.

This behavior hindered my basketball career for a semester. My grades were fine until I began to miss class and it was all downhill from there. I flunked every class last semester except for one. The result of my failure was losing a semester's worth of basketball eligibility and academic probation. This lesson was the more important of the two. I know now to never lose focus or there are serious consequences. I have a younger sister that is about to begin high school, and I just pray that my wisdom will teach her a lesson in life that she will inherit instead of seeing the