My freshman year was definitely a surprise for me, in more ways than it was expected. Coming off of online school in my senior year, I was excited to go to an "institute of higher education" to be able to actually learn something. I had experienced a lot of burnout from online school, since social life had been all but removed from high school and learning felt like such a chore. When I got to college, the amount of learning that I was doing definitely increased, which was something I expected. The way the learning happened was very different than I had expected though, since it was much more individual than I had thought it would be.
Professors gave information in lecture but exams and other graded assignments went above and beyond the understanding I was able to get from being in class. This was definitely a double-edged sword, since it made going to class less important (and less stressful) but also made the graded assignments much harder. I was forced to form study groups and seek out help in office hours or from students who’d already taken the class, which I wasn’t used to doing in high school.
One thing that carried over from high school was peoples’ attitudes toward learning. The large majority of people didn’t seem to enjoy their classes and would only go because they had to. With attendance being optional or just “highly encouraged”, people around me would often skip class and catch up later, which was a strange concept to me. Some classes, like my CMSC250 class, were run in such a way that going to lecture was a strictly worse use of my time, because the lecture “recap” videos the professor would record were much more condensed and more useful.
The last thing I’ll say about learning is that I got a well-needed wake up call about how I learn. I’m often someone who likes to work on things in chunks, rather than taking a whole block of time to do something. I also enjoy interacting with other people who think similarly to me, so discussion-based classes were fun for me. I also realized I don’t love math outside of what I need for my CS classes, and that even my favorite classes weren’t always exciting. These were all things I learned taking classes in college and trying out different ways of studying, going to class, etc.
In terms of forming relationships, the best decision I made was to play club ultimate frisbee. The team is full of great people who are both competitive at the sport and fun people to be around. This created a great environment for me socially, since I tend to enjoy diving deep into my interests but I also like to have people to do it with. The fact that people were able to match and outdo my intensity for the sport was great, but it was also nice to be able to pull back from the competition and just enjoy spending time together. I don’t know if other clubs form the same bond, but I expect club sports all have a pretty similar environment so I would recommend anyone who likes sports but doesn’t want to play super competitively to join a club sports team.
Taking a lot of Gen Eds meant that it was hard for me to form relationships with professors I had. Even in my major, the classes I took were lower-level classes with huge lecture sizes, so the professors had no idea who I was. This was made worse by the fact that in CS, a lot of the office hours are only for interacting with TAs, and the professors don’t have specific office hours where you can meet with them. This again made it hard for me to form relationships.
Overall, I wasn’t prepared super well for the way I needed to learn in college. Even now, I feel overwhelmed with the things I have to do for the end of the semester, so my time management, motivation, and discipline all need some work. I would recommend new students find a schedule that’s moderately busy, get involved with some clubs, and try to make some friends, but it’s also important that they think about their mental health. My mental health has gone through phases in college, just like high school, and the times it’s at its best is when I manage my time the best, not when I’m the least busy.