Having completed my first semester as a student at the University of Maryland, I have experienced many unexpected events. While all of my classes contained surprises, I found that my Science and Global Change scholars program class contained the most surprises in content and teaching. Similar to many of my classes, I expected there to be lectures to provide information on whatever topic it was we were learning that day accompanied with homework to reinforce our knowledge on the subject. Additionally, I expected classwork that would help to reinforce what we were learning in the previous class in conjunction with the new lectures in the form of group work or mini projects both independently and in groups. After having been in the class, I found that some of this was true. The class setup in terms of the actual class allotments were much less interactive than I had originally imagined. Coming into the class and especially seeing as it takes place only one day of the week, I was expecting the class to be more interactive in the sense of having classwork to do. Equivalent to the actual class setup, there is almost always a lecture that takes place. However, I was expecting the lecture to only be a part of the class in which the other part would be applying what was taught in the lecture. While mid semester there were activities like this where group work was required, I had expected it every time rather than only a couple of times. Additionally, I anticipated this class to have more standard homework. While we were assigned readings in which we had to respond in a discussion to, I was expecting to have more homework assignments which related to what we were taught in class rather than those about a reading that would sometimes correspond to themes we had covered or were going to cover in classes. The most synonymous thing expected by me coming into this class that I observed were the bi-weekly quizzes, which were done on our own time and collectively covered everything we had learned or read in the class with emphasis on the newer topics.
Separately, the material covered in the class was one of the biggest differences I experienced in terms of what I had expected versus what was taught. Based on the description of this particular program and after the orientation presentation, I was expecting the class to emphasize the effects of our current global warming dilemma and the effect humans are having on this temperature change among other aspects of the earth's transformation. Specifically, I was expecting there to be a lot of attention on the human impact of the earth's current condition in terms of technology and how that connects to our climate and ecosystems. While we did cover this in a lecture in class as well as our book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History , it was not particularly the focus of the class. For example, some lectures that I was not expecting to cover in this class were the true meaning of the scientific method, relation to fossils, or fallacies. The biggest shock in assignments I had however was creating a webpage as I was expecting mostly readings and homework in the class. However, between the readings and class discussions I believe everything I was expecting the class to cover was covered, just not as in depth as I had originally imagined.
In a broader sense, college life in comparison to high school life has been fairly predictable. Having grown up near a college campus and around a member of college faculty (my dad is a professor) I had a fairly good idea of what I was coming into when I went to college. However, the change is still very different for reasons such as the distance and exploration of buildings to be able to locate classes. Additionally, having so many different professors was a change and especially not being able to see them throughout the entire day in the same building was new as in high school, they are almost always in their classroom either teaching a class or holding study hall. One of the last big changes was being able to have more free time in between classes as with scheduling, students are able to pick when, where, and what professor they would like allowing them to add down time between classes or start their day earlier or later as they would like. For future SGC students, I would recommend most for them to beware of homework readings. Seeing as the readings can be a little heavy depending on the week, it is important to chip away at them throughout the week rather than at the last minute where they may not be able to absorb the full meaning of the author. Additionally, while I think it is important to strive for the best, I think it is important for future students not to get caught up on their grades as the professors are willing to be lenient on resubmissions so that you can produce the best quality of work and with the quizzes, they are simply for personal evaluation on what you need to learn or what you are comfortable with.