By Marta Bekele Kebede, our co-winner of the Nathan Jillson Memorial Scholarship who recently began her first year at UC Davis.
College is ?
My friends ask me, “How is Davis?” Of course I answer them in the expected manner, as if its all good, but I can’t really describe it to them--I can only attempt to describe it. All I can say is college is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. There is so much to tell, but not enough words in the English language to describe it. I started off this year as a freshman that got lost and didn’t know what building her next class was in. I signed up for my classes thinking that I could handle anything and that I was capable of pulling off as many units as my schedule allowed, but later I was proven wrong. My conclusion is college isn’t high school. I am glad that I tried because even if I didn’t succeed as much as I would like too, I know that I have learned from my mistakes.
My second family away from home
Dorm life is great in its own way. My dorm mates have become my new family through these couple of months. Of course they could never substitute my real family but they have taught me so much. Sometimes I feel like a child who is discovering new things about their siblings that they never knew about. We all come from different backgrounds, but we have the same goal. We strive for education and each of us has a unique quality to contribute. We study together, eat together, and hang out together. While living so close to each other, we sometimes discover some unpleasant qualities. But what I like most about dorm life is we just push aside those flaws and just accept one another regardless, because we have nobody else here at Davis and we got each other’s backs.
A course: Litigating the right to die.
I took one course, which taught me something I don’t think I would of wanted to learn elsewhere. It was a freshman seminar with the most catching name: “Litigating the right to die.” Unlike my other classes, this course was held in a small classroom and there were only fifteen students. We only met about two hours per week, but the course left a lasting impression. We learned and discussed the hardest questions that anyone could ever encounter like “When do you declare someone dead?” We analyzed and discussed real court cases, and each student received a chance to express their personal opinions. We had to write a research paper for the final. Researching that paper, using real life cases as our facts was really interesting and sometimes even scary. I had to think of what I would of done in the place of the patients, who were dying and were just trying to die a dignified death. Accepting the fact that I am dying is hard enough as it is, but also deciding how I am going to die seems even harder to me. Overall I am glad I took that course and would recommend for others to take courses like these, because they provide us with a way of looking at things from a different perspective.
Overall I have experienced a lot in college so far, and I know for sure there is more to come. I will have my ups and my downs but regardless I will have knowledge, which is an ‘up’ anyway.
