ESSAY

Jessica Ross 8/31/18 Literary Journalism What Led Me to CMU Central Michigan University was one of the four colleges I applied too. The thought of college has always made me very nervous, because high school was a rough time for me. I was never a good test taker, studying made me antsy, and my attention span was very small. I took study skills for the first time my sophomore year and it helped me more than I could have ever imagined. I took notes in a much neater way, organized my assignments, and started using a planner. I also started telling myself that I was smart instead of always telling myself that I was a bad test taker or that I had a short attention span. My final grade point average in high school was a 2.8, it had improved tremendously every year after freshman year. The first college to respond to me was Wayne State University, they wanted me to be in a program where I would have extra help in all my classes. I was not interested in this because I felt it was unnecessary. The only reason my overall GPA was so low was because I was on a medication that caused me to have short term memory loss freshman year, I would study for hours and then fail the test. Even though I did good every year after that, my freshmen year was still impacting my grade point average. Next, Grand Valley State University replied, and I didn’t get accepted. I was starting to get nervous at this point because I was not expecting rejection. A week went by and Central sent me a letter in the mail, it said that they recognized how my grades have only improved since freshman year and that they wanted to see my final transcript before they made their decision. A month went by and the trimester ended, I sent my final transcript and they responded with my acceptance letter! I was so happy, and then I was just waiting to hear from Western Michigan University. They accepted me too, I began researching the school’s pros and cons, they ended up being just about the same. Now, the only thing impacting my decision was my best friend. She was debating between a few colleges too, she decided on Central and suggested we room together, and that’s what sealed the deal!