Often, entering college, students think they know exactly who they are. Throughout their four years, they come to find out they’re just starting to discover the person they are meant to be.
Every college student has their own unique story about how their time in college has shaped and molded them into the emerging adults they both are and are becoming. Three Pepperdine students said there is a stark contrast between their first-year and senior-year self.
“It [college] is a time that is set aside for exploring these questions of like, ‘Who am I?’” said Falon Barton, campus minister for the University Church of Christ. “‘What do I want to do with my life? Who do I want to become? What kind of family do I want to create? What kind of friendships do I want to have? What do I believe about God? What kind of faith do I want to develop and grow into?’”
Entering College
Grant Bishop, senior Computer Science major, said some of the adjectives that describe his first-year self are immature, hyper-anxious and an overthinker.
Furthermore, Bishop said he struggled with social anxiety, where he would find himself freezing mid-conversation. He often wasn’t sure what to say and had a habit of talking himself out of doing things he wanted to do.
“I wanted to rush my freshman year,” Bishop said. “I just talked myself out of it, and, looking back, I could have done it. I rushed my junior year, which was fine.”
Hannah Loewen, senior Integrated Marketing Communication major, said the area that she has grown the most in during her time at Pepperdine is spiritually. Despite knowing Jesus since she was 4 years old, her time at Pepperdine is what has solidified her faith as an adult.
Before coming to Pepperdine, Loewen said her faith was elementary, and as a result her first-year self was unsure of what her purpose was.
“She really was looking for what her purpose was,” Loewen said. “But she didn’t know exactly how to find it, and so she spent a lot of time trying different things, trying to figure out, really, what was going to be for her.”
Ary Napora, senior Sports Medicine major, said her first-year self was a lot less outgoing than she is now. She found herself in her room studying most nights and didn’t look to make any connections beyond the friends she had made in her suite.
“She was very afraid of making new friends and adapting to life in college,” Napora said. “I was not very outgoing, and I kind of just stuck to my suite and like once I made those friends, I kind of didn’t branch out from that group.”
Moments of Change
Three years later, Bishop said some of the biggest lessons he has learned during his time in college are the importance of surrounding oneself with the right people and making decisions for oneself.
Some of the people Bishop said he thanks for helping him throughout college are Grant Lee, Dylan Duggan, Ryan Woytowitz and Jeff Walling, his first-year seminar professor and director of the Youth Leadership Initiative. After Bishop started prioritizing himself, he found himself making these close connections.
“I needed to seek out people and also just be more confident in myself, and that allowed me to just find people that wanted to hang out,” Bishop said.
As for Loewen, she said getting to explore both her general education and major classes through a Christian lens, along with being able to have difficult conversations about her faith, helped her develop her spirituality.
Beyond just conversations, Loewen said she attends Vintage Church Malibu, The Well and Friday Night Lights, all of which have helped connect her with Jesus, and helped her destress and take a step back when she is overwhelmed with classwork.
“I’ve become inherently more confident, more joyful,” Loewen said. “I will get up with purpose in the morning, and I’m super excited. Instead of being scared of what my future holds, I’m excited and expectant for the next chapter in life.”
One person Loewen said she wants to thank for helping her grow during her time in college is her roommate, senior Makenzie Homrich.
“She has been such a biblical friend in terms of calling me higher,” Loewen said. “Encouraging me and knowing scripture and how to pray with me over certain situations in my life, whether it’s stress or it’s hurt or it’s looking forward to the future, she encourages me like and loves me like Jesus does, and she is such a reflection of him.”
Loewen having a roommate to help guide her spiritually is right in line with many other emerging adults, said Barton, who studies emerging adulthood. While emerging adults are very spiritually curious, they often find their spirituality in different places than older generations do.
“We [emerging adults] still have a large amount of involvement and curiosity in faith communities,” Barton said. “Emerging adults do tend to be more friend oriented, and so sometimes they find their spiritual fulfillment in friendships, as opposed to in traditional faith communities.”
The turning point for Napora breaking out of her shell was when she studied abroad in Switzerland during the Spring 2023 semester. Abroad, she was forced out of her comfort zone by traveling in a country she was unfamiliar with, with people she had recently met, which helped break her habit of keeping to herself.
“Abroad was really where all of that stems from,” Napora said. “Having to navigate a new country with people that I’ve never met before, completely being on your own — isolated from everything that’s familiar. And there were a lot of pros and cons, like mistakes and awesome things that happened there.”
Napora said she almost didn’t want to go abroad because she was nervous about facing the challenges that come with being in a foreign country. Now, her abroad experience has completely changed her college experience.
Barton said from her time of observing Pepperdine students, going abroad is one of the most common experiences that will lead to growth in a college student.
“Traveling and making new friends, it can bond you with people really closely,” Barton said. “Because, you get stuck because of a delayed train in Paris in the middle of the night, and you have to sleep on a bench, all of those kinds of things are really bonding experiences.”
Lessons Learned
In addition to the close bonds Bishop has made, he said learning to make decisions for himself has completely changed his college experience for the better. One of the biggest changes from his first-year self is he doesn’t get worked up over little things — especially socially — and is confident in who he is.
“Just trusting myself, listening to my gut, I think that’s one of the most important things you can do in college,” Bishop said. “A lot of friends might be doing this. A lot of friends might be saying, ‘Oh, I want to go rush. I want to join this club,’ but at the end of the day, you have to do what you want to do, and what’s gonna make you happy.”
Two habits Bishop said he is doing now that he wasn’t doing his first year are consistently attending Vintage Church Malibu and journaling. Journaling helps him recap recent events and get his thoughts out, while church helps start his week off on the right foot.
“When I go to church, sometimes they tell a lesson where I feel like, oh, maybe I’ve been lacking in that quality, and I want to be able to help,” Bishop said. “Like, this past Sunday was about generosity and doing things for more, things for others, so I’m trying to find more time to do that.”
Unlike her first-year self, Loewen said her faith has helped her find her purpose by understanding that God has placed everything in her life.
“Instead of being fearful just because that isn’t something that maybe some of your peers that are closest around you don’t like,” Loewen said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not for you and go out and seek individuals that have those same callings and passions, because it’s something that God has placed in your life.”
Napora said one of the biggest lessons she learned from her time abroad was navigating a work-life balance. Rather than focusing so much on school, she’s now able to take a step back and enjoy the moment.
“It makes me appreciate the little moments more,” Napora said. “And it’s also helped going on adventures and doing all these things to put everything into perspective of how insignificant some of the really big school things can feel when there’s so much world around and just embracing that has been something new.”
As Napora is entering her adult life, she said she will take what she learned during her time in college and abroad to make sure she doesn’t fall back into her previous habit of keeping to herself too much.
“Never stop learning and adventuring,” Napora said. “Always keeping that work-life balance, always having those fun things to do that break like the mundane routines of daily life — just carrying that spirit and that adventurous attitude outside of college.”
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