Personal Narrative: What I Learned

For me, what I learned doesn 't necessarily come from the book or the actually content of the course, but rather from the individual exercises and writings. I 've learned more about myself than I was expecting. Granted, I have learned the content, but to me it 's more of a refresher with a few new terms and explanations, than learning a whole new subject.

As I said, my biggest takeaway is what I 've learned about myself. I learned on more than one instance that my communication skills are lacking like I assumed they were, but what I really learned is that they are lacking for a completely different reason than I originally thought. It was kind of shocking.

In one of my writings, I mentioned that that my confidence levels are lower only

One day after a particularly heated argument, she followed me up to my room and came at me again, and wouldn 't let it go and wouldn 't let me leave. She kept asking me why I was acting the way I was and asked me why I had changed, and finally I snapped and said that I felt that they had abandoned me while I was away. They never called me, never came to visit, never asked me how I was doing. They didn 't know I was seeing a psychologist because I was struggling so much and being put on sleeping medication because I would go days without sleeping. Even on my birthday, my father didn 't even call. I was over 300 miles away from my mom and friends in Tennessee, and over 100 miles from anyone else I knew. I was alone, so I had to learn to take care of myself and worry about me.

When I finally said it, she started crying and I felt terrible. But she agreed and finally understood why I was acting the way I was. Even though I hated it, and still struggle with it, my relationship with her has significantly improved.

Now, I say all of this, and tell my story, because I came to the realization that I was scared of how she would react and how she would feel afterwards is why I don 't talk, and why I start to shut down when communicating and I came to that realization during this class. I will admit that it was not fun, and I explained it to my boyfriend when I got home and he said that it makes sense. And now I 'm slowly but surely working on it, and will hopefully, by the end