During my senior year of high school I was very nervous to go to college. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle the stress and responsibilities that come with living by myself and studying college courses. Thankfully, to my surprise, college was not that hard of a transition. I was lucky enough to room with someone who I was already friends with so I was comfortable in my dorm from the beginning. My advisor and I had discussed that I wanted to get general credits out of the way my first semester so I took oral communications because it is a course required for everyone at UMD. I struggle with public speaking so I was glad to get that course out of the way. Throughout the semester however, I thoroughly enjoyed taking the class. My professor was really caring and accommodating towards those who needed the help. The class that I struggled with the most throughout my first semester was math113. I’ve struggled with math throughout high school, and the pace and rapidity at which I had to learn the topics went over in the class was overwhelming at times. This is also due to the fact that it took me a while to find a good way to manage my time. At the start of the semester I would often procrastinate doing math assignments but after the first exam I realized that I needed to be more on top of my assignments.
As far as it comes to the Science and Global change class, I didn’t expect it to be as broad as it is. I assumed it would focus very much on climate change and global warming and policies surrounding those issues. While it did go over those topics, it also went very deeply into how the field of sciences operate and how scientists operate. Both professors are both knowledgeable scientists and they provide very interesting lectures. Topics like pseudoscience and ancient civilizations were discussed that surprised me in a good way. Furthermore, I learned how to use HTML to make websites and customize them which is a useful skill. It was frustrating learning how to code as I am unfamiliar with coding, but after the first couple assignments I got the hang of it. During the style sheet assignment I had an “aha!” moment where the coding made a lot more sense in how it worked. Being in the scholars program was also nice because of the excursions that we went on. I very much enjoyed the New York trip to the museum of American Natural History. It was a fascinating museum with plenty of information about all sorts of exhibits. My favorite exhibit in the museum was the exhibit with a giant whale hanging from the ceiling throughout a giant room that displays multiple aquatic ecosystems. Being able to explore the city of New York was also very enjoyable. Walking around the city I got to eat very good tacos and explore shops at Bryant Park. The scavenger hunt trip to D.C. was also a fun excursion that allowed me to meet other people in my scholars program. It was fascinating to see how people reacted to the city who were not from the area of the DMV. I found it interesting because I am a Maryland resident and have been to D.C. so many times that I am accustomed to seeing buildings such as the capital and the monument.
As far as my life as a university student in general, it was difficult to adjust to some things, and a lot less difficult to adjust to others. Time management was the most difficult adjustment at the beginning. I believe that most people will have a relatively similar experience where they misjudge the difficulty of classes at the start of the semester. I was victim to this, but not just that classes were harder than I thought, some classes were easier than I thought as well. I am much more confident about the next semester now that I know what to expect out of my classes. When I chose UMD as the school I wanted to attend, I was unsure about the size of the student body. I wanted to attend a less populated school when I was searching for colleges, something around 8,000-10,000 was my ideal range. However, UMD is not as intimidating as it seemed to be when I was deciding to attend the institute. The campus contains many people, but it’s so big that there’s always places somewhere on campus that are available to study in or to be alone. Exploring the campus is also quite enjoyable. Some days I will enter a building if I have some free time and explore to see if there are any good potential study spots.
For future SGC students, I would recommend using a calendar as much as possible. It was annoying at first taking the time to plan out the months ahead, but you will thank yourself so much when you don’t have scheduling conflicts. There were many times where I wanted to hang out with friends or wanted to relax but forgot about an upcoming assignment or test. After I started putting in tests and other events into my calendar my life became so much easier.