Austin Carter's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

If someone was to ask me in the beginning of my senior of high school what my first semester of college would be like, they would have heard a lot of glittering decrees about that cliques I would be in, what programs I’d be a part of, what events I would have attended, and what work I would have done. One years, fifteen college credits, countless all-nighters later, and an ongoing pandemic later I’m in a position that I didn’t exactly see coming. Although University of Maryland was a dream school ever since my brother attended in 2015, other aspects I couldn’t have seen coming. I could not have expected being accepted into College Park Scholars, nor could I have foretold my first semester being such a jarring online experience. While this initial taste of college was not what I expected, I was still able to accomplish a lot of what I had planned for myself and this has made me optimistic towards the years to come.

I first learned about COVID-19 through my internship mentor at USDA. It being that a lot of my mentors and colleagues were born and had family in China as well as being very well studied in infectious diseases, many of them saw the potential for a situation like what we are going through now. Despite this I was optimistic. It was late November, I was a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School who had gone through the worries of H1N1, Ebola, and Zika so I felt like I had nothing to worry about. I had a research practicum, AP exams, band performances, prom, and graduation to occupy my brain. But on March 11, 2020, my coworker and I were driving back USDA when we heard that our school was shutting down until after the weekend due to an individual in close contact with the school testing positive for COVID-19. Instantly, I knew that my senior year was effectively over. A closure of a day turned into a few days. A few days turned into a few weeks. A few weeks turned into a few months. A few turned months into until further notice. I was disappointed but my optimism remained. I knew after talking with a few mentors and friends at UMD that taking my courses online would be the way to go so I started setting my expectations for what I would do this semester. To say they’ve been met with mixed results is putting it lightly.

In the later stages of high school, I was a bit anxious about college life. I experienced some of the troubles of transferring schools before, splitting off from friends and making news ones. I expected college to be like these experiences multiplied by one thousand. I sensed it would be a couple weeks before I found a group of people I could hang out with and despite a good number of my friends attending UMD as well, I predicted that I would drift apart from a lot of them. The pandemic complicated these expectations as I thought connecting with people would be more difficult, but my ideas more or less remained. This turned out to be not the case. I was fortunate to be accepted into the College Success Scholars program which assists young men of color during their studies at UMD. Through our biweekly seminars in the summer, I was able to connect with a lot of the people in this program and enter the semester with a reliable group of brothers whom I have yet to meet in person. In addition, classes like ENES100 and ENGL255 introduced me to groups of people who were fun to talk with, to laugh with, and to learn with. In addition, a couple months into the pandemic, a group of my closest friends decided to set up a Discord channel to keep in contact. This channel grew to include a lot of my friends from high school and some friends who I had lost contact with. Even during the semester, we set up weekly calls to play Among Us or Jackbox TV or watch Studio Ghibli movies. These were some of my fondest memories from the semester and helped me keep my sanity when the reality of it all became too much to take.

I didn’t know very much about College Park Scholars when I was accepted to UMD. Despite some research and information sessions, I still didn’t know what I was getting myself into by the time I attended the first colloquium. As it was a one credit course and it was program related, I expected some work but not a lot. I expected the portion of SGC at Centreville to get to know each other a bit better than the portion staying at home. These expectations were somewhat right. The people I know at Centreville were decently social with the rest of us only interacting through GroupMe or the occasional event. It’s a lot harder to make bonds over a zoom call and a lot of my classes struggled with that fact. CPSG100 gave us avenues to get to know each other, but it can only do so much. Similarly, the workload that I previously mentioned had a few tricky assignments but nothing to lose sleep over. The assigned literature was easy to read and required next to no deep analysis because of them being nonfiction argument novels. The lecture videos could be lengthy but Panopto’s speed up function, timestamps, as well as some of the interesting subject matter helped to make them seem less so. The quizzes were fairly straightforward and the few missed questions were an oversight on my part.

While the college experience is a rough transition, there’s a lot of consistencies between it and that of high school. The online component is the same, just with more to do. To future students I say don’t stress yourself out and overthink the tiny details of what you think will happen. Set small goals and take everything one week at a time. Make a schedule of what you want to get done and hold yourself to it. Reward yourself every now and then, whether it be weekend trips or just some time to relax. Check your email when you wake up and when you’re about to wind down for the day so you don’t miss out on something. If you have a hobby, look it up in the university directory. Chances are there is a club to fit your interests. Most of all savor the experience. You are entering an exciting time in your life so make it exciting.

Last modified: 14 December 2020