In reading my Honors 100 reflection, the me of the past seemed so certain of himself with a blasé attitude thinking that nothing could ever go wrong particularly with respect to school work. Historically I had not had much trouble coasting along in school while getting decent marks, but my first year of college really threw me for a loop. Even though the whole experience was eye opening, on class continues to hold a place in my heart representing a turning point in my way of thinking.

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Just as so many before me who wanted to go to medical school I had to pass through the gauntlet of chemistry that stood in my way; however, it stopped me dead in my tracks. As can be seen by the quarter of my transcript that I am willing to share, I did so poorly in CHEM 152 that I had to shift it to SNS grading and I didn't even pass. This was the first moment in my life that I had not passed a class on the first attempt and along with it came a profound sense of internal failure that I harbored for far longer than I care to admit.

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This period during my freshman year was one of many that contributed to me losing my way and leading to a great struggle that took the rest of my college experience to bounce back from. I wanted to be a doctor for as long as I remembered, and because of this I shifted my way of thinking to figure out why I was feeling the way I was and eventually allowed me to move passed this traumatic chapter in my life. This is representative of my "falling down" in an academic sense in that I had a profound impasse that I had to navigate around, and for a time I did not think I was going to be able to get on with my life. This obviously did not turn out to be the case, but it did become an integral part of the person that I have become.