Personal growth – Aran Sheehan

You will struggle: Why you should ask for Help.

In my first semester at Wesleyan, I fully embraced the liberal arts education, taking Astrophysics, Multivariable Calculus, Advanced Spanish Poetry and Greek History. My advisor told me that my schedule sounded balanced and interesting, but little did I know that Greek History would quickly become a huge problem. It was, without a doubt, the greatest challenge of my freshman year, requiring memorization of numerous names, battles, and events that all sounded the same to me. However, this difficulty led to one of the most important realizations of my life: you will never be good at everything. I know this sounds wildly pessimistic, but recognizing my weaknesses allowed me to swallow my own pride and ask for help when needed. Throughout my semester in Greek History, I would attend office hours and study with other students, keeping my own opinions and thoughts quiet as I knew I was not an expert. Through squashing my own self-reliance, I was able to learn from my peers, and make connections with others who were also struggling.

Prior to this experience, I had never relied on others to help me study. In high school, everything had come easily to me, and within my comfort zone, in Math, Physics, and Computer Science classes, I always seemed to be able to come to an answer by myself. Despite my major and future career choices likely having nothing to do with Greek History, it will still be one of the most influential classes I took, as it gave me a clear skill: ignoring my embarrassment and asking for help. Now that I am in more challenging classes, I use this skill to help me understand my work. Relying solely on others is not useful, but conversing and learning alongside others has proved invaluable to me thus far.

As I continue through college, my classes will only get more and more difficult. However, with the ability to swallow my pride and ask for help, even when it is embarrassing questions or easy problems, will allow me to gain understanding I wouldn’t get from struggling alone.

My home is a 24 hour flight from my College.

As I stood at the International departures gate, watching my mother turn around to walk back to the car, I realized I was terrified. Every memory I had was from Singapore, my home for the last 18 years. My friends, my family, all my favorite restaurants – everything I knew was in this city state half the size of Rhode Island.

It had been a long time since I’d had to make friends. In High School, all my friends had been there since elementary school. Now, I knew nobody, and I felt very isolated. I had just arrived on campus, and was already being shoved into international student orientation. Though nervousness plagued my system, I knew I had to make new friends. This led to my taking every possible opportunity to meet new people. While waiting in line to get my student ID card, I started talking with another new student. At lunch, I asked to join a table of people I didn’t know. I attended night time activities such as painting and karaoke, all in the hopes of making connections. Every interaction became easier to initiate, every conversation flowing better than the last. Throughout international orientation, I had countless conversations with complete strangers, and to this day I still am close with many of these friends.

Transitioning to life in the US was also about experiencing a new culture, new traditions, new foods, new weathers. Everything was new, and for the first couple days, I was biased against it, constantly comparing it to Singapore. However, connecting with such a variety of students throughout orientation showed me the beauty of different cultures, and how appreciating and engaging with many cultures can greatly expand your knowledge of the world. I learned about the shared experiences of myself and a student from Hong Kong, sang Hindi karaoke songs, played soccer with students from Switzerland, India, Oman, France, and met my roommate from the US.

Though it was very difficult leaving my home to travel to the other side of the globe for college, it was an invaluable experience, teaching me how to connect with strangers and appreciate a variety of cultures.

Getting COVID helped me make friends.

After four years of High School shaped by COVID-19, I was prepared for College to be a new, wonderful experience. No more zoom school, no more quarantine, no more masks. Yet, during my very first week at Wesleyan, I contracted COVID, and was instructed to isolate myself for a week.

A saving grace came in the form of my RA, Tyler. He would come talk to me through my door, and play iMessage games with me, making me feel that I was still a part of the world outside my door. Tyler’s kindness showed me that college was all about connection. He was looking for a friend just as much as I was.

However, when I was released from quarantine, I found that most people had already made friends. I had missed out on orientation, where you are all forced to be in the same group and spend hours each day together. This was a perfect location for friendships to form, and I would now have to make friends with random people who I’d never met, and who had no reason to be around me. I attended films by myself, went on midnight swims in nearby ponds, and joined a variety of clubs in hopes I would make connections. All of these activities were outside of my comfort zone, but some of them became regular occurrences in my life. I made friends and memories at each activity, something that would’ve never occurred had I not contracted COVID for the fourth time. Despite it being such a burden to me throughout my life, for the first time COVID added something to my life: resilience and confidence.

What I learned as an RA.

As an RA at Wesleyan University, I took charge of 38 freshmen, with the instructions to help them adapt to college life. With this came formal training, during which I learned how to handle situations ranging from roommate arguments to flooding, as well as about community building and guidelines, among other topics.

The main brunt of my work consisted of communicating community guidelines with my residents, making posters and events to engage them with schoolwide activities, and solving problems they had.

For example, one of my residents had a quarrel with their roommate over bedtime hours, and when they would be turning off the lights each night. One of them was a night owl, while the other went to sleep early. As the mediary, I was able to reach a place of compromise. My strategy was to get each of them to write down 5 suggestions for the other person, and to have them read the suggestions. Afterwards, each of them realized some of the suggestions were feasible, and so we worked out a couple of suggestions for each of them to follow. The main ideas were that the early sleeper agreed to postpone their bedtime slightly and read for a little while in their room, while the other would study elsewhere after the lights were turned off. Mediating this specific conflict showed me that oftentimes, spoken word, and the tones and biases that come with it, can cause people to become defensive and standoffish, while written word can show plainly what points people are trying to make without biases, tones, or raised voices.

As my first official job, being an RA taught me many valuable lessons, the most important of which was always being on top of my responsibilities. During my duty nights, where I would stay in the building and deal with any situations or problems the building and residents had during the night, I always made sure to show up to my shift at least 30 minutes early. I would get going on my safety checks immediately, instead of postponing them and potentially endangering the residents of the building. I would frequently check the common rooms and bathrooms for any potential problems, and be available to come talk to if necessary. Furthermore, as a first time employee, I learned how to make my relationship with my boss productive and positive, by making sure to always be on time and fulfill all requirements of my job. Being in this position helped me structure my life, and improve my organizational skills and conflict resolution.