Throughout my first semester at college, the organization and flow of the class was much different than I was expecting. The structure of my classes were solely based on textbooks and requirements by the department of the specific class. I experienced this in Math 140, English 101s, as well as Chem 135. I felt as if they were modeled around a base curriculum. I felt as if this was a good structure, but sometimes I felt like going outside of the parameters of the class would help students understand the material better. For example in math, there are different ways you can solve problems, and for the course of math 140, problems are typically intended to be solved a certain way. This way sometimes tends to be confusing, monotonous, and can be hard to follow. There are often easier ways to solve problems that help students understand more effectively and cause them to complete the problem without mistake. I expected University courses and professors to explain to the students the easier and simpler way to complete problems for them to understand better. The grading of the professors are much different than I expected as well. My professors this semester are very different in their grading styles. For my chemistry class, my professor is very lenient with his grading style if you get the work in on time. He also gives healthy curves when the class does not do very well on an assignment which I find very helpful. This is not like my math professor though, as homework is not accepted if it is late and there is pretty much no curve no matter how bad the entire class did on an exam. I think this is quite unfair and it is not what I had been expecting when going into this math class. It also seems like my exams in this class are much harder compared to the other math 140 classes. In all my other classes, I feel as if the grading system is very fair to the students. A couple of things that I was not expecting when we started the class, was that we went over science as a whole. Not the science of global change, we looked at what science really was. This did shock me. We learned about fallacies which I was also not expecting and also did not know about them in depth. As I was not expecting this, I was expecting to learn more about global change. Although we did cover it, it did not seem like it was the main focus of the class which I thought it would be. I got this sense through the lectures as well as the homework. The homework did not focus on global change really at all and instead looked at topics that seemed to be perceptions that people had that were not actually real, such as the corn circles as well as ufos. The outside class activities for CPSG changes based on the activity. Our excursions are pretty much as I expected, as we go on these to learn about the climate and the change. Even on the day of the service, I felt like I was learning about this issue. Some outside the class activities are for meeting people which I thought very helpful and it was not as I was expecting. I also think some of the outside activities, such as the excursion worthy discussions, are really interesting and informative. I went to the All We Can Save discussion and it was really interesting the points that the speakers made about what we can and plan to do that help the environment in Maryland. So far, my college experience has been completely different than what I visioned in high school. I thought college was going to be somewhat similar and the only thing different was that I am living on my own and that I have to make new friends. In high school, I thought that school would be similar. Even after all my friends who were older than me told me how much work it was, I never really believed them until I got here. I thought I was going to be able to slack off like high school and still pass and do good. This is not the case by any means. I put countless hours into school work every week, unlike high school where it was maybe an hour a week. College life is so much different than I was expecting. I thought making friends was going to be a walk in the park, but I struggle finding people who have similar interests as me. In highschool, I knew everyone and had a great friend group with people that are all similar to me. In high school, I also thought I would be having a daily routine such as going to the gym early every morning, eating breakfast and showing before class to stay organized. This has completely gone out the door as I wake up just in time to make it to class. Some advice that I would give to future students is that they should use their free time to their advantage. They should not wait until night to do their homework, like high school. They will end up being awake all night. Another thing I would tell them is to go over material that you are going to learn in lecture, before lecture. This is because it makes class so much easier to understand and follow and will ultimately help on your midterms and finals.