When you receive your high school diploma at the end of your senior year, usually the plan is to go straight to college and follow through on those years for your next graduation. Similarly, that was the plan for me when I first graduated from college and for a while it seemed like that would always be the case. Life has a way of throwing you curveballs though; sometimes they’re things you can handle with grace and other times it’ll throw you off your game to where everything seems to go wrong. Either way, through various means and reasons, when I first applied to Farmingdale State College two years ago, I came in as a non-matriculated student. The first year I was here was one of the most nerve wracking years I’ve gone through in my life, from personal insecurities over worries about processes, but it has also been one of the most rewarding!
When I first came to Farmingdale, it had been a while since I’d taken any classes; my primary concern was to live on campus and also readjust myself to taking classes again. I ended up only taking two classes my first semester, alongside trying to get adjusted again to living on campus- at the time, just surviving seemed to be my end goal. I didn’t really talk with people much or really do anything outside of my room. I have my roommate and dorm mates to really help with that, I came into the college with a lot of worries about my lighter class load and the fact that I’d more than likely be older than some of the people in the same dorm building but time and time again, they put those concerns to rest.
It was midway through the first semester that the first thoughts of matriculation came to mind, that maybe Farmingdale was the place where I wanted to continue my education. From there on, I met with advisors and looked through the course catalog. I had taken a general criminal justice class as well as a chemistry class to just get a feel for the criminal justice major but I had to solidify what I wanted to do and accomplish here. Prior to arriving at Farmingdale, I had been a science major at another SUNY college for a bit before stopping and I remembered that while I enjoyed the course material, I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted to be doing, if I just wanted to do research instead of something more in the field.
While I was working through that, I went to meet with admissions and transfer services to try and figure out exactly how to get this process started. Or well, I should’ve been meeting with them, as the date grew closer and closer to the spring semester, the more nervous I got about the situation. It rolled into the spring semester all too quickly and for a while it seemed like maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do but after sitting down and deciding that I really wanted to attend this college properly, the choice was obvious. I went through the processes and before the end of the spring semester, I got that packet in the mail congratulating me on my acceptance!
Time and time again after becoming matriculated, Farmingdale has proven to me that I made the right choice. I wasn’t really present here my first year, I needed to work through things but in my second year I tried to be more active. During the summer, I got a job working with the Office of Residence Life that continued into my second year. I’m currently a Resident Assistant alternate that might be placed next semester to help out new and returning students in the dorms. I became more immersed into the major I chose for myself, now maintaining a 3.63 GPA. As for campus involvement, I started working this last summer for the Information Desk and was accepted into this very Rambassador for this semester! I have many things to thank Farmingdale for aside from these opportunities, I feel as though following through on becoming matriculated has given me confidence that I wasn’t sure that I had prior to coming here.