GORDON RUAN
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Friday, May 29, 2009

TIME FLIES. GRADUATION is tomorrow, and before I know it I’ll be heading off to college.

As a senior, it’s amazing for me to look back on my five years at Uni to see how much I’ve changed as an individual. Not only have I become more appreciative of running a mile every other day, but I’ve also learned how to express myself better and become a more open person.

When I first came to Uni, I’ll admit that I had some difficulties integrating myself into the larger community. Besides playing on the subbie basketball team, I rarely attended school social events and clubs.

Instead, I preferred to stay home to work on my next homework assignment, play video games, and improve my chess skills.

For some reason, I felt uncomfortable having to hang out with people I didn’t know very well. All my solace resided in my house where I always had something to do.

Now thinking about it, I think one of the reasons why I was so bottled in was due to my reluctance to make new friends. Since I had applied early to Uni, I had to leave all my best friends behind at Countryside. Though I had made a few close friends at Uni, I barely spent any of my subbie year trying to become part of the school community.

I continued to remain inactive in school events until the middle of my freshman year. Around this time, I got to know more people through being on the chess team. In addition, I was encouraged by my friends to join outside school clubs such as Global Studies Initiative.

Yet, I still kept to myself a lot, as homework and chess were still my biggest priorities, and would still spend most of my time indoors.

However, with my friends encouraging me to attend parties and hangouts, I slowly began to become more involved in Uni social life. I knew more people and became more open to my surroundings. I soon began to regret all the things I had missed out during my previous years at Uni.

So during junior year, I decided to find ways to express myself better and become more active at Uni. One thing I did to challenge myself was join journalism, which made me become more assertive and self-confident.

Through writing weekly blogs, I gained confidence in expressing my thoughts on current news and my own personal life. In addition, through writing news articles and feature stories, I became more aware of the events that were going on at Uni.

So when senior year came, I was no longer regretting my previous inactivity. I also no longer felt left out, as going to parties and hanging out with friends became my new top priorities besides homework and chess.

As I established my new self, I also had more confidence to take on leadership roles. The most notable leadership role was focusing my attention on the chess team. Since chess is what I am best known for at Uni, I made it my ultimate goal to concentrate all my efforts toward preparing my team to win the state title.

From the confidence I had gathered in my previous experiences, it was not a hard task for me to work with my teammates. So when we won the state title, it felt great to see that my leadership role had made a difference and that all the hard work the team had put in paid off.

As I am writing this senior column now and looking back to my subbie year, I still can’t imagine how much I’ve changed. By becoming a more open and confident person, I was able to make my life much more interesting and even make contributions to my community.

So before I leave, I want to encourage everyone to fully take advantage of the great things that Uni and its community offers. Be willing to step out of your comfort zone and try new things out. It’s great, and your life will become much more interesting.