If we haven’t had the pleasure of crossing paths yet through the Navigating Undergrad Blog, hi! My name is Bianca, and I have written for this blog for the last year and a half. Three and a half years ago, I started my educational journey at Cornerstone, and I am happy to say that this month I graduate! This last semester has been a whirlwind, but I want to take some time to share about my experiences here and why I chose to call Cornerstone home.
Why I Came to Cornerstone
Throughout my time at Cornerstone, the one question I have heard the most has been, “Why did you choose to come to Cornerstone?” And I usually give an answer about how I loved visiting the campus, how I was excited about studying psychology or, most honestly, because Cornerstone gave me the best financial aid package. All of these reasons are true! I do love the campus and the people here, I was and still am passionate about the content and education I am exposed to in the psychology program and Cornerstone was the best financial option for me.
But in my last semester here, it became clear to me why I really came to Cornerstone. Because Cornerstone felt like home to me.
My First Day at Cornerstone
My very first day on campus, I was nervous and a little overwhelmed. It was a Wednesday, and my first class was a kinesiology class after chapel. I still think it’s ironic that my first class on campus was a class about total health and wellness because, as a future human services professional, that’s what I focus on now. The last class of the day was Intro to Sociology and it became one of the most influential classes that I ever took at Cornerstone. I loved everything about that class and made some of my best friends while taking it.
My favorite memory from that day is the first-day-of-class pictures my friends and I took under the campus clock tower. I still have those pictures, and while they are objectively terrible and my friends would drop dead if they wound up on the internet, I still smile when I see them.
My Last First Day of School
When I started this final semester of my senior year, it was a mild Wednesday afternoon. I picked out my first-day-of-class outfit, went to campus, came home and asked my mom to take my last-first-day-of-school picture. And she did.
My last first day of class was much like my first. I was overwhelmed and stressed about balancing a hectic school, work and internship schedule. But mostly, I was happy to be back on campus for my last semester.
This semester I took my senior capstone class, a class that seniors take with their peers in the same major. I have grown so much closer to my graduating class of psychology students and feel so much closure about my time here at CU. A big part of a senior’s capstone class is reflection, and in doing so, I came up with a list of favorites from my time here at Cornerstone.
Favorites
I think that my favorite days on campus have been the first day of class each semester. All the students are on campus running around to get to classes and the dorms. We ask our friends what their class schedules are, find out who we will eat meals with, when we have time to talk to each other and who’s working late which nights. While first day of class parking is definitely NOT the best thing ever, I love seeing my friends and professors all excited for a brand new semester.
I have honestly enjoyed all of my classes, and it has been so much fun to get to know the different professors. One of my most memorable experiences is when my entire class spent about 15 minutes explaining to our non-fiction professor the meaning of Gen Z slang terms each class. Specifically, the meaning of yeet took him the longest, because he couldn’t quite grasp how it could be both a verb and an exclamation at the same time.
My favorite class of all time though was about abnormal psychology. Now, keep in mind that I am a nerd and love disordered psychology, so an entire class period dedicated to classifying behaviors and discussing psychopathology was my favorite thing ever.
Over the years, I also have spent countless hours playing pool in the Corum Student Union lounge with my friends. In fact, I spent so much time playing pool with my friend John that we bought our own pool sticks and shared custody of them over the years. Now we are both graduating soon. Eventually we will need to determine a permanent owner of the pool sticks.
Future
For the first time in three years, I have extra commuter meal swipes to use in the dining commons and I am desperately trying to use them by the time I take my last final exam. It’s like a surreal metaphor for how I feel about my last semester.
Maybe it was the intense hub bub of the final exams season and trying to finalize multiple different school related obligations, but the reality of graduating didn’t really hit me until the last week of classes. All my friends are talking about their next semester classes, but I didn’t register for any, and I won’t see them again until graduation ceremonies in May. I don’t need to buy any back-to-school supplies and, for the first time in three years, I am not searching three different websites to find the cheapest textbooks. Instead, I have spent my time applying for graduation (yes, that’s a thing you have to do at the end of college) and working on my grad school applications. Next, I am going to start looking for in-patient psychology tech jobs for some experience to round out my resume.
It is the end of one of the most important eras in my life, and I can’t wait for the next one.
