Nico Addai

Classes end next week. Can you believe that? I’m almost a rising sophomore. I’ve got so much planned for summer, let alone this next semester, but it’s always good to take a moment to step back and take in everything that you’ve done right and wrong.

My first year in college honestly was a mess. Although there were no major deaths in the family or a crisis, I still managed to worry incessantly about my family’s health, finances, and spiritual life now that I was gone from the picture. That made my life worse as it wasn’t until the second semester that I started to understand how much work each class at Wellesley requires just to break even.

1. Gaining 12kg in the span of 12 months. Given, I was in a new situation, with a lot of new stress, away from my family and in a different culture and continent, but why didn’t I think of hitting the gym sooner? I’ve been eating horribly thinking that I have a college student’s metabolism. I don’t. Over the summer I will be chronicling my weight loss with aggressive persistence.
2. Wasting time on guys that aren’t worth the effort. Look, I go to a women’s college an hour away from MIT and Harvard, and 30 minutes from Olin and Babson. I dabbled online for love and haven’t gotten lucky. Parties aren’t the issue; spending non-sexually charged time with guys is.Oh well, maybe next year will be better.
3. Not going to church more consistently. In addition to having a community to fall back on, church convicts you of things you do wrong by the Word. Given, since I haven’t been going to church as often, I’ve been reading the Bible more and following a devotion more consistently. However, I miss praise and worship with other believers of God.
4. Using my phone all damn day. Look at the next point.
5. Not taking care of myself mentally. I totally underestimated how events affect the mind. During the election, my anxiety went through the roof and I did nothing to treat it because anxiety doesn’t exist in Ghana. It turns out that using your phone all day when the elections happened, with all the grime of the dark side of the internet is a horrible idea.