Being Flexible

Hello! I'm Joanne Min and I'm a work-studies student at the front desk of the Bechtel International Center. I am a first year (soon to be second!) communications major and Pacific Legal Scholar (Pacific's pre-law program). Came to Stockton from Orange County in Southern California and love it here.

My first year here, I've challenged myself to be flexible: physically, mentally, and emotionally. To achieve physical flexibility I started training myself to do the splits. I've trained in taekwondo while I was in junior high, but due to my tight hamstrings, I've only successfully split on one occasion! For those ten seconds I held the split position, I've never felt more accomplishment hahah! I practiced three times a week doing butterflies and hamstring stretches BUT first semester finals came along!! For three weeks I studied studied studied!

That's mental flexibility. I had to put down my stubborn drive to do the splits in order to prepare for my first set of finals. Mental flexibility gets you places, I'm telling you. It helps you go from one goal to the next and prioritize your life along the way. In order to achieve mental flexibility I really had to work. "Focus on public speaking for 30 more minutes. THEN you can go satisfy your hunger." Oh yeah. That was tough man. But so worth it.

Even though I was away from home and in my own Pacific bubble with my lovely friends and hot meals made to order, STUFF happens. REAL stuff. Like family troubles and friend troubles and uncertainties. Things like that. I'm telling you, people don't stop just because STUFF happens to you. I've had to learn how to go from crying my eyes out on the phone with my mom to delivering a speech for Public Speaking with less than thirty minutes in between.

I may not have felt the accomplishment from doing the splits, but by going through first year determined to learn flexibility I came out with so much more. First year is OVER, but what I've learned from it will stay.

Don't forget to stretch,
Joanne Min