Hello, my name is Timothy and I’m a computer science major at College Park. This was written in the Fall 2020 semester amid COVID-19 so everything I talk about is related to or affected by the pandemic.
Honestly, this year has been rough getting used to things. Especially because it is also my freshman year, I have been having trouble getting used to the college experience. As a computer science student, most of my assignments were already online so I wasn’t affected as much as my friends who are taking classes that require labs, however, I am still experiencing the drawbacks of an online education. For example, my computer science class where I learn code doesn’t have code on tests. In addition to this, my writing class is led by a professor who isn’t adept with zoom. Because of this, it’d sometimes result in him being unable to share the correct screen when he’s changing tabs. The small things like, although not incredibly mind blowing, has been a minor annoyance in my first year. In addition to this, I do believe that my teachers are giving varying amounts of work because everything is online. For example, I believe that my math and writing classes are giving less work to help students cope, however, my computer science and communication classes are probably giving equal, if not more work than if we were in person. In addition to their workload, I also believe that the classes’ delivery of online education may need a little touch up. For large classes like computer science, our teachers banned us from emailing them unless it’s administrative. In my opinion, this is an unfair restriction placed on students, however, I can also see that they’d be swarmed with emails if they were to allow it. This pandemic has overall just placed everybody into a bad place and different teachers are trying different things to manage things efficiently. Lastly, compared to how I imagined college courses to be, I’d say the difficulty is similar, if not more, for certain classes. I believe that variables, such as the enthusiasm of professors, really plays a big role in how classes are designed to cater to students.
For CPSG specifically, content wise, a lot of it was what I expected. As we went over the course, things like rock formation and the changing of global temperatures were definitely topics I expected to encounter in this class. One thing I expected to go over that didn’t really come up was the effect of humans and how we’ve accelerated the change of global temperatures. We went over it briefly, however, I was expecting a more in depth review of what was going on. I don’t know if we’ll be learning about that in future classes, however, that was one thing that surprised me. Lastly, one thing that disappointed me this year were the cancellations of outdoor activities. When signing up for SGC, I was excited to learn about what we’d be doing, however, because of the pandemic, we’re stuck at home with nothing planned.
In high school, my vision for college was me living in a dorm and spending time with friends. I expected a new degree of freedom mixed in with the usual academic strain every college student experiences. However, because everything is online, I’m stuck in my room, unable to see my friends often, while still feeling the stress coming from schoolwork. It’s like the pandemic has taken my first experience, stripped away the good parts, and left only the stress behind. Although it’s still a good thing that I can see my parents every day, I wouldn’t say it’s what I expected. I was also sad about leaving my dog at home because I’d only get to see him every now and then, however, I’m also happy that I can see him all day.
Personally, my advice for future students is to be prepared. I don’t know who you are or when you’ll be reading this, however, I do know that, even after everything is normalized, you should still be ready. Certain classes are difficult and you should always put in extra work to account for unexpected bumps along the way. I learned this the hard way when I was taking the final test before finals for math. My grade was relatively high and I thought I had some leeway, however, as a result of me being too relaxed, I forgot to review one specific lecture video and I think I lost 10 points on the exam. Although it may sound small because it’s only for one exam, it’s the best I can say. Another piece of advice is to not let yourself be overwhelmed by schoolwork. Don’t overestimate your ability and don’t be scared of dropping a course. Especially if you’re a freshman, the university has something called freshman forgiveness so you’ll definitely want to look that up if you didn’t already know about it.