A few words of reflection do not suffice for my first year at Portland State. As cheesy as I felt going into “freshman inquiry” as a (slightly) older married student, PSU’s FRINQ has proven itself to be a unique and, frankly, life-changing class experience.

 

First, about spring term. Truthfully, I found it a little bit hard to concentrate on the dense reading in Gardens of Democracy. We spent so much time outside and in the community this semester that reading 50 pages of dense language at a time pushed to the surface my lack of discipline as a student.

 

But GoD really expressed what I feel about modern society: we try to operate as independently as possible, seeking these elusive definitions of happiness and personal freedom, all the while forgetting our place in family, community, and ultimately, nature. Because I’ve found a new obsession for the news and writing about it (see my front page), I struggle all day long with listening to the police scanner, checking on my top news sites, and following other journalists, that in trying to stay ahead of what is going on in the world, I subconsciously separate myself from it.

 

That being said, I am grateful for how much time we spent in community this semester. My community engagement partners Tyler Hayashi and Teresa Brink grew up very differently than I did and will most likely lead a very different lifestyle from mine in the future. They were skeptical of my "Brentwood-Darlington community board" idea at first, because they could not imagine the value of recycled bulletin boards for a low-income working-class neighborhood that I believe needs community connectedness to survive. Like Tyler has told me often since we put up our first two boards, he met people through our project he would never have interacted with before. Likewise, working with two very different students from myself, and making myself vulnerable to my neighbors, I had to develop confidence in what I was doing and pitch this as a good idea to everyone involved. Now, community boards are common knowledge on our neighborhood Facebook groups. I now update my board at least once a week with new fliers.

 

Our resilience project, heavily influenced by Portland’s impending earthquake disaster, was especially valuable for freshman students that can spread their knowledge of disaster preparedness to new students next year, dorm life, and to their homes in other parts of Oregon and Washington. While I think Tyler, Teresa, and I chose an overachieving project with our homemade water filter (that did not end up working very well), we did at least learn that we could gerry-rig something from scrapped materials in case disaster hit our doorstep while we still lived in the Pacific Northwest.

 

As for how I grew in class this year? I’m not sure my life changes any drastically or more quickly than anyone else’s, but a lot happened this year. I changed my major a few times, I started writing for PSU’s well-renowned school newspaper The Vanguard, I became a Sustainability Student Fellow, I went through a long personal depression, and my cat died. Drooly as it sounds, my Freshman Inquiry class was with me every step of the way. Dr. Gerwing helped me get through some missed classes creatively when I was not feeling well enough to make it to campus, Stephanie gave me advice and contacts for newspaper articles I had no direction on, and Tyler and Teresa were understanding when last-minute emergency vet visits interrupted our project meetings. My friend Kai brought me Kona coffee from Hawaii, Dara and I vented through text message about school drama, and Tom entertained me with his antics.

 

When I finished my first year at Concordia (2015-2016), I did not have many close friends at school. I lived far away from campus and spent most of my time at home. I worked a lot and school was second-priority. There was no year-long class to help me adjust to work-school-marriage life. I was wrong about my hesitations towards Freshman Inquiry. There were several students my age, and I ended up bonding (and grabbing beers) with a few of them. I heard a lot of creative insight in other students’ approaches to our readings from The Other Wes Moore and bridging conversations podcasts. I saw other students grow and change over the year.

 

The most significant thing I have to thank my FRINQ class for is supporting me so much. Over the last three and a half months since I started writing for The Vanguard, I have gotten so much praise and support from my FRINQ classmates for my first 25 articles in the paper. They have sparked spirited discussions with my FRINQ peers about politics, sex trafficking, and marijuana. Dr. Gerwing showed my first article to class on the projection screen the day it was published. The encouragement from my classmates and professor have spurred me on to pursue journalism as a career path.

 

I am thankful I chose PSU. I am thankful Freshman Inquiry exists. I am thankful Dr. Gerwing pushes his students to ask deep questions- to not just do more than scratch the surface, but to skip the surface altogether and dive right in. Do not change a thing!