One of the first things I learned, very quickly, was that you are only as good as the people you surround yourself with. Initially, I was incredibly homesick. I missed my family, my friends, my dog, and I didn’t feel like I fit at Miami at all. One of the things that made this problem worse was that I was around people who had very different values from me. Because of that, and because of the fact that I just wanted to make friends, I ended up hanging out with people who didn’t make good choices or influence me in the best way. I was too afraid to put myself out there, and that is one of my biggest regrets. All first semester I felt alone. Eventually, through ways I’ll talk about in my next post, I changed this and realized that being around motivated, happy, uplifting people really made all the difference.