I came to college with a fair bit of expectations. This was due to a lot of different factors, but some of the main ones were the pandemic, my general tiredness of high school, and the things my relatives as well as general society had told me.
COVID-19 had hit me pretty hard, fully breaking off friendships with half of my close friends and estranging me somewhat from the others. This made me have a pretty big hope to find new friends in college, which for the most part did happen. I made friends with some guys on my floor, most of which happened to also be in SGC, which definitely helped the anxiety I felt in the first week of college. COVID had also taken away my ability to go to large social gatherings, and it was fun to attend some more group activities and get back into interacting with multiple people at once, something I love.
I was very tired of high school towards the end, something COVID also contributed towards. Being in the IB diploma program, many of my “required” classes were very uninteresting and the online school format didn’t help. My peers seemed to bash on learning more than they enjoyed it, as in America it’s seen as cool to blow off work in highschool. My hope was that college would change both the academic content and the view of academics among students.
My final set of expectations came from my family and society’s conditioning of my view of college. Many people talk about how transformative college is for them, and my parents’ longest-lasting and closest friendships to this day are from college. My family has always tried to tell me that college would be somewhere to find “people like me” who are interested in learning and some of my nerdy hobbies, which also contributed to my expectations. Society also, as of late, has given me a less than positive view about student loans, which is something that I’m pretty happy I’m avoiding (for the most part).
All of these expectations culminated for me to create a rose-colored glasses for me to don when I moved in. My first day, the glasses cracked and they still haven’t fully recovered. It was pouring rain when I finally got out of the Xfinity center, where I’d been waiting for hours to get my ID, room keys, etc. I lost my phone in the rain and was contactless for the first couple of hours before my parents were able to get me a “burner” phone from home. I spent hours trying to set up the WiFi in my room, and my roommate wasn’t even there to help me with any of this.
The rest of the week was slightly better, as I met some people during service day and it kept me out of the dorm. This is where I made some of my scholars friends, along with when my roommate moved in that Saturday. As I mentioned before, I felt some shock at the change of environment, which mostly manifested as an unshakable feeling of anxiety that eventually faded.
Fast forward to now, I don't feel anxious anymore, except maybe for my finals this week. My expectations have been dashed in many ways, but they’ve also been met in ways I wouldn’t have thought. For the social aspect, things have been pretty similar to what I expected; I’ve made some pretty good friends on my floor and playing Club Ultimate Frisbee, which has been the most fun I’ve had in college by far. I played for four years in high school, but the competition and brotherhood in college is leagues above what it was like there. I haven’t totally found people “like me” but I’ve given up on the idea of finding a perfect clone of myself; I think it’s better to make do and enjoy different activities with different people sometimes.
As far as academics, I don’t think it’s totally fair to make a judgement quite yet. While my social situation will also evolve as the years go on, with COVID restrictions hopefully easing, I think academics will be the biggest shift for me as I continue through college. My intro classes were definitely too easy, as I only took 12 credits which my advisor weirdly recommended.
My non-CPSG classes were all fairly easy, except for MATH240 which had some very hard exams. CMSC131 was a pretty easy class for me, since I’ve been programming for 7-8 years now, and in the language we use (Java). ENG100 was also quite easy, mostly because my teacher is a very relaxed grad student who would change deadlines all the time.
CPSG was different from what I expected. When I signed up for scholars, I wanted to do something outside of my major, and that’s mostly what I got. However, doing the HTML and CSS work was fun for me as a CS major, and I think it’s a great skill to have. The class content was different from what I thought, since I thought it would be more focused on environmental activism and changing the world that way, rather than focusing on elements like climate change. Overall, the class was on a difficulty level on par with what I expected from a 1 credit course, but I’m glad I took it since it definitely helped make some connections for me.
In terms of advice I would give to future students, it’s to build a schedule or routine for every day. I find that repeating the same pattern of actions in college has helped me not slack off when it’s necessary, which is super important to succeed. Maintain a good personal hygiene, workout, eating, sleeping, schoolwork, social life, etc routine that fits for you, and use some sort of calendar or other planner to aid this. Also, try things that work for other people, and you will at least find something that doesn’t work for you, which is more helpful that not doing anything.