Hi, I’m Lori Makela a third year student studying Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems (MIS). I’m from Hancock, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula and its about 10 minutes away from Tech. I had lived in a small town all of my life and graduated with 72 students in my senior class. I knew them all pretty well. I saw a few of my high school classmates here on campus my first year but it still was not the same feeling as high school. But college was not easy at all as I felt left out during my first semester. College was a lot harder and more challenging. I noticed that each class was more accelerated and extremely tough. The classes I took got harder as I moved through them. I learned that if the studentsdo not understand the material, usually the professor will keep going on with the syllabus and if you do not understand the material, the student will have to go to the professor’s office hours to seek extra help. And I can tell you this from experience, I have walked out of class wondering why I am in college and if this is what I really want.

I have a different life style than a regular college student. I am a commuter that lives at home while attending Tech. While living at home, I have chores that a regular college student does not have. Some chores that I have to do at home are to plow the driveway during winter, cut the grass and do typical things to upkeep a house. It’s hard to juggle these responsibilities around college, which means studying, chores, and actually trying to live a normal college life all at once. Its kind of hard but I do it because it’s what my dad would have wanted me to do.

I’ve had a challenging life since my father passed away three years ago. In those three years, I’ve had to make some hard decisions, wanting input from my father but he was not there to give it. A decision that I had to make was whether to stay near home or go to a different college. I knew I wanted to go down state to a different college but I wanted to stay close to home and help around the house. But if I stayed home for the wrong reasons, would I kick myself some day? I had so many things going through my head and it was so over whelming because I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I thought the easiest thing would be for me to stay home and to be a commuter going to Michigan Tech. At that point, I did not know whom I was going to please, myself or my family or both. So far, I think I made a fantastic decision since I’m still going to Tech and keep making progress everyday which is challenging but worth it.