So far, college has both been what I expected and very different from what I expected in many different ways. I had different people tell me different things about what college would be like, from friends to teachers, cousins, or even my stepfather, so my expectations were complex and oftentimes contradictory.
As far as my expectations for my classes, especially for CPSG 100, I was expecting a much more work and study intensive course. In reality, much of the course was reading about the topics in books that are reinforced by information given in lectures, and assignments were meant to test comprehension of the information given. One of my teachers in my senior year of high school refused to give anyone a 100 on an assignment because, in her words, "Your professors will not be giving you 100, I am just preparing you for the reality of college", which is very untrue. If we did well and earned a 100, that was the grade we got. The balance between assignments and "exams", which we did not really have, was also much better than I was expecting. I had heard that many classes in college weighed exams much higher than day to day assignments, meaning that if you were not a good test taker, you were screwed. While that is true for one of my other classes this semester, it was not for this one, and the balance between our weekly assignments and the quizzes every few weeks was, in my opinion, very good.
There were several things that we covered in this course that I really was not expecting to in class I assumed would be looking mostly at environmental changes and climate change. The first was the few days we spent talking about logical fallacies. As I said, I thought the course would be mostly about climate change, so talking about fallacies was not something I was really expecting. However, I feel like it was useful because it tells us the common techniques we use and mistakes we make in our thinking, which can be useful in arguments and everyday life. More recently in the semester, I was not expecting to learn about how climate change shaped human society in the past. Learning how warm and cold periods in the history of Earth influenced things like Vikings, the rise of different religions, the spread of deadly diseases, and the collapse of different societies like the Mayans was unexpected, but very interesting to learn about.
I expected to learn a lot more about the future implications of climate change and what some possible mitigation or adaptation efforts could be, but I guess that is more for next semester. I think this expectation was also influenced by my current major and the classes I am taking for it, like ENSP and GEOL, which both talk about the implications of climate change. This semester was to lay down the basics of climate change in the past and working up to the changing in the present and the future, which we will focus on later in the program.
As far as outside the classroom activities, as I said earlier, I was expecting a much more intensive college experience, with little time outside the classroom that was not taken up by homework or studying, so I expected not to have time for out of classroom activities. My vision of college while I was in high school was this sort of wall of work until I graduated and then got a job, but in reality, it varies from class to class and with this course, the workload is manageable enough that I can go see movies on the weekend or read a new book after my classes without having to worry about the wall of assignments I feared that I would see in college.
As far as the advice I would give to future SGC students about settling into college life, the first thing I would say is actually to try not to have expectations of what college will be like. The college experience is slightly different for everyone, so if I tell them to "be ready for___" or "make sure to____", it may not be applicable for them, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. Try not to think about the possibilities, take it one day at a time and form opinions on college for yourself, it will save you a lot of anxiety building up to your first day. I will say, keep in touch with your peer mentor, they are happy to help you if you are struggling and since they were in the program, they know how it functions, so their advice will likely be useful if you are having trouble with assignments. Merck and Holtz will also be your friends for this, in my experiences they were very willing to help and genuinely want you to succeed. Finally, make sure you bring an electric tea kettle, it is much easier to make ramen that way and it will get you through midterms and finals just fine.