The course that most surprised me during my time in UMD was one of my major courses titled ENES100 or Introduction to Engineering Design. During all my life in middle school and high school any courses I did relating to engineering were all computational and theoretical and ENES100 was my first course where instead of doing math and physics religiously we instead did something fun and interesting such as building a robot. Another thing that surprised me was how bad some teachers on campus were. I took one of my physics courses this semester and was surprised by how horribly run the course was. The teacher did not have any public speaking skills and I learned on day one that it was almost impossible to learn things in his class. This surprised me greatly as I thought that course would be somewhat easy because some of my upperclassmen friends said it was easy with a good teacher but it turns out that I had to self study the entire course. Something that I learned from this surprising experience was that securing a good teacher is way more important than start times or walking distances as it is much easier to learn with a teacher with a 4.87 rating on planet terp than a teacher (my physics professor) with a 1.27 rating. The best relationship that I have made in my 2 semesters at UMD are with a Dynamics Professor named Patrick McEvoy. At first, I did not really think it was that important to make connections with my professors, however, as my classes got increasingly complicated I was looking for a way to keep my grades up and decided to pop into Dr. McEvoy’s office hours to see if I can get some help on an upcoming project. Through these office hours, I got 2 hours of one on one time with Dr. McEvoy and my grades soared as the class became more challenging due to my talks with the professor. I highly recommend taking advantage of a professor's office hours in order to develop a relationship with your professors and to help your grades. I come from Maryland and am a bit of an introvert, because of this many of my friends in college have been friends with me since I was a child; I simply maintained these relationships and have a core group of friends that I hang out with. When I first got to university, I was a bit daunted at the fact that I now had to take care of myself and had a lot more responsibilities now that my parents were no longer watching over me constantly. However, my friends lived very close to me and I actually room with one of my best friends so it made the adjustment easier as it is difficult for me to struggle with adjusting when I am surrounded by great friends. Incoming freshmen should try to surround themselves with their friends as much as possible so that their college experience isn't too terrible if they go into a difficult major. In my college experience, the thing that I was least prepared for was the amount of walking that a typical college student has to do. During Covid my senior year, I was kind of a couch potato and did not move very much due to self isolation. When I got to campus, I sometimes had to walk 20 minutes from one class to another which made my life very difficult and it actually affected my attendance. I suggest incoming freshmen not be complete couch potatoes and stay active such that when they come to campus they aren’t blindsided by the amount of walking they have to do.
Return to home page.