Narrative Essay

Hy Phan
02/07/2013
ENGL 1301

Strange Building
It was a beautiful day with many clouds that seemed to be dancing on the sky. I was standing still in front of a strange building. Suddenly everything became very special to me. I stepped back and thought about the time I was in high school. The memories came back very emotionally, I remember the good time I had in high school, I was now scared of moving away. Then I realized that I should leave what happened in the past behind, stepped forward, and opened widely the door of that strange building. I knew that there were a lot of new things to be discovered on the first day at college – Houston Community College.
First, I was very excited about the new learning style in college. It’s totally different from high school. I can study whatever I like. In the new education requirement of HCC, I was required to take EDUC 1300 which is a new course to guide students to be successful in college. In this class, I got an opportunity to learn more and especially researching for many different majors. My classmates and I discussed a lot the information that we had gathered. Our professor gave us the chance to present in front of the class about our majors for the future. Additionally, the class became more interesting as we read each chapter in the textbook, I learned many helpful skills for my life such as critical thinking, time management, finance, and learning style.. These skills can help me a lot for myvery first steps in college life.
Beside of good news, it is always a bad news. There were so many troubles on the first day at college. Everything began with Financial Aid problems, it took almost 3 days to completed all of documents in order of refunding process, even though I had applied for it in January 2012 . The cause was I forgot to turn in the tax transcript. Another thing made me very headache which was how to choose courses in order of transfer program. My major is Biomedical Engineer. I was advised to take courses such as science, math, English, history, and government. But the question was how I can know which one was good for my major , because each course had many different type. For example, history has two types: HIST 1 and HIST 2; math has three types: Calculus, trigonometry, and statistics. However, I just calmed down and took it step by step, I asked the other students who has taken them before, we sat down and discussed for the directions for future study , it was very helpful . Text book is a biggest problem in college, I didn’t know that they are so expensive actually. Their average price for new book is from $50 to $200 and used book is around $30 - $100.
I also met a lot of friends who were as excited as me for their first day at college . It is very easy to make a good relationship when we know that we are in a same major program , kind of like when you travel to China and meet an American when you get lost .That I felt very happy because I realized that I was not alone in a big-cold building . “Seft-study” is very important in college because it’s not high school where teachers have to “ baby-sitting” us all the time , so a good friendship is like a strong passion when we can discuss for question that we don’t understand or simply reviewing together before every exam .
This is my second semester I have been studying in HCC , but I will never forget that day , the day with nervousness , confusion , embarrassing , happiness , excitement , and so many different emotion inside me . The day I thought I would be fail right at the main door of college because I didn’t have enough confidence but now I know that I’m not walking alone on the road to success.