How I upgraded

You must be wondering what does this guy mean about "How I upgraded"? Does he mean how his lifestyle change? did he become rich?

No that is not what I mean, I didn't get rich even though, I wish, but that is only my desire and forget about that. What I mean is that I upgraded my skills in terms of studying and in life general. So yes, I sort of upgraded my life style.

So that change didn't happen until I was a freshman in college. Since childhood I did not like reading. I mean come on "who likes reading" not this guy that's for sure. I would sometimes never really understood things easily. I always avoided reading even in high school, during our quite times in English class every student would read books of their choice but me, I would always grab a picture book from library and would return to librarian immediately after class. Somehow I survive high school and went to college or I like to call it "enter the Dragon".

I went to college undecided but one thing I was sure about, anything with less amount of reading. So immediately with in the first week of college I changed my major 3 times because "stress" who I thought was only a myth back when I was an high schooler became a living hell. Just the transitioning from high school to college was hard in itself, all the classes that my advisors gave me were classes, that I always avoided in high school and vow to never take them in the future. But Here I was stuck with biology, chemistry and kinesiology which had lots of reading. These were the main classes in high school I never liked mostly because to me everything seemed complicated. In my mind, I was frying fries, because that's what you do when your brain has fully fried.

Throughout my first semester I struggled each day and every day I thought about dropping out. But one thing kept me going and the fact that my parents weren't able to go to college because they struggle to feed their families, since they were from developing countries. They had to start working at an early age so had to quit schooling, just to survive and even after we migrated to U.S. They had to struggle so they can fulfill our desires. In return "not exclusively" they ask us to present them with a college degree. My parent's sacrifice to their families was enough for me to keep going down this path. Moving on somehow I passed all my classes and came second semester.

I like to call it "semester of Enlightened" this is the semester where I will be upgrading myself. New shoes, new gadgets, new tools and weapons.

Nope nothing like that, but far better then that. My second semester opened up a whole new world to me. During my second semester I was given a course called WRT 104. This course was my life changing course because that's when I was introduce to the idea of "MEDITATION". I knew about the idea but never really applied it to myself until, I was given WRT 104. My instructor gave us all the details about meditation and the benefits of it. Such as doing meditation can increase focus, increase interest in other things and it's an stress reliever. These were all the things that applied to me. Instead of just talking about the idea and then moving on to another topic and forgetting about meditation, she took a step further and made a rule that every time we walked to the class, the first things we should do is meditate for 3 minutes as a class. This was "The Upgrade". During my second semester most of my courses required lots of reading. So Naturally I was stressed out but after meditating with the class I was actually finishing all my readings. Believe me or not I wasn't the guy to believe in these sort of things that if you do this, such an such will happen.

But It was actually happening to me. Even though I would still not like the idea of reading but once started reading an specific chapter of a book it kept me interested enough to actually make it to half way. I never fully finished it. "Hey it was a huge deal for me to even like what I was reading". But later on I would end up finishing it anyways. The things that my professors were teaching wasn't getting through me at first but I was interested enough to go meet with them 1 on 1 and get a clear understanding of what the material was about. By this time the upgrade I received was clearly working, I mean I was showing my interest in classes such as bio but not so much in chemistry to this day still I don't like it. I was able to cope with stress now, able to handle any kind of situation more easily mostly due to I was doing better in school. Meditation was so helpful to me that I kept on doing on my free time.

My third skill didn't fully manifest itself, until my junior year of college which was my focus. So since second semester of college until junior I kept meditating everyday for 3 minutes a day, sometimes over because I was so in the zone. By then I was receiving B+, B and sometimes A- in my courses. My third skill started showing itself in my plant ID course. That course required us to able to identify and name trees based on their leaves, buds their growth habit, buds, flower. We had a list of over 200 plant species that we had to identify based on their characteristics. That sound a lot which was, but able to identify and name them sound really difficult which was. However knowing me as a high schooler never able to remember anything, was a surprise, to find out that i had no trouble remembering all the different trees. That's because by then my focus was increased so much that if I looked at one thing for at least 5 min I was fully able to describe it, at least physically. I was able to memorise lots of things with no problem unlike in high school.

I got so good at memorization that I was ranked number 7 with the highest score in my final. Now I'm able to understand things far more easily then before and have better control over my stress.

The Upgrade I received in College was the greatest thing that happend to me because these are the skills I need in order to deal with regular life situations, mostly stress.