After taking a wide variety of courses at UMD ranging from math and science to architecture and religion, the greatest surprise from a course was in my history class that I took to fulfill a gen-ed requirement and which dealt with religion in medieval Spain. Previously in high school, history classes were very broad in scope and rarely delved deeply into any one topic or time period. In college however, there are tons of different history classes, all focusing on specific topics or periods, so students have a massive range of classes to choose from based on their interests. This was unexpected to me but I really appreciated the wide range of possible classes. Therefore, when signing up for classes make sure to extensively look at all the available options and decide what classes to take based not just on gen-ed or major requirements but also on personal interests and potential future career or research paths.
In college, there are a lot of opportunities to develop beneficial mentoring relationships with faculty members. I have found that most professors and TA's are open to or even looking to get to know their students better and to provide them with mentoring or guidance opportunities, something rarely available in a high school setting. Personally, I developed a strong mentoring relationship with one of my TAs in an engineering class, which has helped me significantly throughout the course of the class in not only understanding the material being taught but also in getting used to the college workload and expectations placed on me by my professors. In general, these relationships are not hard to come by, and as mentioned most faculty members welcome students who reach out to them. However, a lot of the time the students are afraid or unwilling to even attend events such as office hours, which can be a great first step to actually getting to know a TA or professor better. Therefore, I recommend that new students should not be afraid to get to know some faculty members better as mentoring relationships are key in a successful and enriching college experience.
Although adjusting to college life can be really challenging, your fellow peers can greatly help you get used to this new environment. Most importantly, it is critical to remember that you are not alone in struggling to adjust to college life, and that all of your fellow classmates have the same worries and fears as you do. Personally, I was worried about meeting new people and making friends in college, but looking back, almost every single one of my peers had those same fears as I did. Therefore, don't be afraid to reach out and meet new people, as everyone around you is looking to make new friends just like you are. It can definitely be scary being the first to say "hey", but it's so worth it taking that leap.
Looking back, I think that I wasn't prepared for the fact that I would almost always be with or around people, whether it's friends, classmates, or even my roommate. Previously, I had never really given much thought to the fact that as someone who's more introverted it may be hard to cope with constantly being around people in college, but as soon as I got to UMD I definitely felt the change very rapidly. In general, there's not much you can do to "prepare" for this aspect of life at a large university, and instead it is something that you get used to over time. However, something that I found that helped me a lot was taking some time every now and then and just reading or watching a show in my dorm or just laying in bed on my phone or with a book for a bit before going to sleep to de-stress and just spend time by myself. Overall though, I would say that in college the most important thing for a new freshman to do is to just take a deep breath and relax, everything will turn out fine and there is no reason to be worried.