Expectations vs Reality Reflection Essay
12/6/2025
As this first semester at college comes to an end, there were many things about college that surprised me. Honestly, one of the biggest surprises this year was just how fast it went by. In high school, I had all of my classes every day of the week, but in college most of my classes only had actual class 2-3 days a week. Due to me spending less time actually in the classroom, it made me feel like the semester was moving by extremely quickly. In a lot of ways, I was expecting College to be a lot more brutal than it ending up being. My calculus 2 class (MATH141) is known as being a very tough and brutal weed-out class, but it has been very manageable, and all of the exams for that class have had a very generous curve. Another aspect of classes that surprised me at college was how late some of my classes were. I have a class twice a week that lasts from 6:30 to 8:20 at night, of which I didn’t realize when I signed up for the class just how tiring having a class that late would be.
At UMD the rigor of the coursework has been significantly different to high school. In high school, classes all felt like a ramp-up to the end of the year where I would have a multitude of projects and exams to study for, whereas college has had a very strong ebb and flow of struggles, with the end of the semester still being the most difficult and stressful section.
Science and Global change has been far and away the least time consuming of my classes, but it was also probably one of the most interesting classes I took this semester. I have always had a vested interest in psychology and environmentalism, of which this class covers both topics. Learning about pseudoscience and how our biases affect our thinking has been a very welcome surprise, as I was expecting the books we read to be more focused on environmentalism than pseudoscience. I was also expecting the class to cover more about what we can do to prevent the issues currently with the environment from getting worse, but I assume that we will delve deeper into that topic in future semesters.
Living on campus has felt very odd. Back in high school, I used to love sleeping in but since I’ve started college and I am now having to wake myself up in the mornings, I have felt more motivated to actually get up early. Waking up at 8:00 in the morning doesn’t feel as difficult as I had been led to believe it would. I feel like I am overall eating better since I arrived at UMD. One of the biggest struggles of going to UMD however is that it feels much harder for me to meet new people. There were a lot of people from my high school who also went to UMD, including one of my closest friends so I haven’t felt pressured to reach out and meet new people. I have always struggled to make the first move when making new friends, which has been made more difficult by the fact that I am not a party person at all. I believed that when I went to UMD I would make a lot of new friends but as of right now, I have only really made new acquaintances. With that being said, I don’t feel lonely, as I still have one high school friend who goes to UMD and another friend who goes to a different college that I routinely call but I did expect it to be easier to meet new people than it actually has been.
Overall I am enjoying my life as a college student at UMD and the freedom it has granted me. To the incoming SGC freshmen, I would recommend that you try to get to know your teachers. If you see them outside of class, say hello, try to get them to recognize your face. Also, I would strongly recommend that students prioritize the teacher for a specific class over the times for the class. Having a good teacher can make a world of difference and can turn a very difficult weedout class into a manageable one. I would also recommend to the incoming freshmen that as best as you can, try to attend all of your classes, including discussion. Missing a day of lecture can be detrimental to your learning of the subject and discussions will usually get you to do practice problems that are similar to exam questions. As a last bit of advice to the new SGC students, remember to enjoy yourself. Over this semester I very randomly discovered that I liked drawing and I have been honing my skills when I’m not doing homework. College can be very stressful at times so it's important to find a safe way to have fun and de-stress.