Peer Interview

Noah Agwu

Peer interview – Emanuel Paul

1/30/18

The idea of college and the excitement of a drastically different lifestyle can cause a senior in high school to lose their minds. Moving away from home and living under your own control are privileges that can take a student’s life on a roller-coaster of emotions. Some students have the unique opportunity of coming to college as a first year early for a summer semester. Among those students was the enthusiastic freshman, Emanuel Paul. As an Orlando native, Emanuel was used to the big city feel and was exited for the change of scenery FSU would bring. The abrupt change from living at home to dorm life hit Emanuel hard. She states, “I’ve been living in a dorm since summer and I got really homesick”, emotionally she was torn, “I’m really close to my family to not be near them”.

As she made the transition from her hometown to FSU she had to change her outlook on life both academically and socially. Living with another student, a stranger can be one of the hardest things to get use to as far as college living. Emanuel realizes that living with someone other than family causes you to compromise. “Dorm is different from my house and my room… you have to cater to someone else, what they do and don’t like”. As far and what Emanuel likes, she enjoys everything about FSU and hopes to “make her parents proud” and influence the younger generation.

FSU has been surprising Emanuel along her first-year journey. “I was surprised how diverse the university was”. She was also pleasantly surprised at how easily she could get around campus, “I can get from one side of campus to the next in 25 minutes”. As a full time student, Emanuel dose come across some occasional free time that she enjoys using to spend time with friends. Social settings are important to Emanuel, she believes as well as other first year students that community interactions drastically help with the transition from one’s original home and family to campus life and the FSU community. Emanuel states that if there is one thing shed add to the FSU community it would be, “mental workshops… people are always going through things and they should have workshops out for students more often”. Looking back over one’s freshman year students may give various definitions of how they felt through it all. Emanuel believes she has made steps in the right directions as a member of society and is happy with how she’s come along these past months. “I grew over these last couple moths as a person and matured, but I think I’m still finding myself as a person”.