By HARLEE BOEHM
assistant news editor

As I struggled to come up with an idea for this column, I was hit with the fact that we are almost halfway through this semester.

You could say that it might be a little bit late to be realizing this considering the fact that midterms and spring break are coming up, but I feel like I have been lost in my own little world for the past month.

All right, maybe I’m being a little bit overdramatic, but it feels like this semester just started.

Now we are suddenly approaching midterms and my brain has finally synced up with the real world again.

After being hit with this realization, it occurred to me that something just like this happened to me last year after a really rough first semester of college.

For the next hour of my writing time, I sat on my couch thinking about how much my life has actually changed in the past year.

Some would call it procrastination, but I’ll just call it an honest and necessary reflection.

At this time last year, I was just beginning to realize that college may not be half bad.

I was almost a quarter of the way through my (hopefully) four years and things were starting to look up.

I was finally starting to make real relationships with the people around me.

I was doing OK.

As time went on through the year, I got closer to a lot of people, gaining best friends here at Gannon and learning more about myself than I even really wanted to.

Another huge thing that happened a year ago was that I met my now-boyfriend. Josh and I met in the way any real modern couple does nowadays — online.

Seeing as how it is still the Valentine’s Day season, I felt that it was appropriate to mention the person who really turned things around for me this past year.

I think it’s also important to reflect on the bad times just as much as the good times. This can give you the opportunity to appreciate the good things even more.

For me, one of the bad things I looked back on was the fact that I grew further apart from some of my closest friends from home over the year.

Realizing this has made me more motivated than ever to get back in touch with everyone back in Pittsburgh any time I have the chance.

As of now, I can sit back and appreciate all of the positive things that have happened to me this past year and realize that I am working toward to being the happiest I have ever been.

I challenge everyone to take a step back every once in a while and look at how things are changing.

It can be really amazing to see how much you can say you have accomplished in as little time a year.

HARLEE BOEHM
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