This year has definitely been quite the experience with a lot of surprises. I think the biggest surprise as far as the breadth of classes was in ENES100, a class where you work with a team of other engineers over the course of a semester to build an autonomous robot car. I was surprised to see both how much freedom we had in the project (we were able to order all of our own parts, and do all of our own design work with very little oversight), and how many resources we had for construction.
We had 3D printers, laser cutters, machining equipment, soldering irons, and more available for us to use. It was really great to discover how much freedom and resources we had going in, and I’d say new students should definitely look into and utilize all the resources the university provides.
Speaking of resources, something that definitely helped was getting to know the professor and TA during office hours. This was both a good way to build faculty relations, and get help on difficult material. I’d recommend new students to definitely pursue office hours as it's a great way to get to know faculty, and like I mentioned it really helps clarify hard subjects. I think my greatest success in this regard was getting to know my chem professor last semester, where during office hours I was able to ask tons of questions which got me through the class. The biggest obstacle I think was schedule, as it can be hard to find time to go to office hours when you have such a packed schedule already.
Another thing that has definitely helped my transition to college has been my relationships with my peers. Having friends with similar struggles to yourself helps you realize that you’re not alone and that a hard class is hard for everyone, not just you. Furthermore, friends can help catch you up on missed class, and clarify questions you’ve had on assignments. The biggest obstacle to this was definitely being shy. It was a rough adjustment at first, especially after a year of online school, before I started to build a new friend group. But once I made more friends it was definitely worth it, since we quickly formed a study group which helped make the tests easier.
I think looking back there wasn’t anything I was particularly underprepared for. Going in, I had read so many online horror stories from burnt-out engineering majors that I expected college to be a hellish slog. While it definitely wasn’t easy, it was nowhere near as stressful as I had led myself to believe. I think my advice to new students would be to stay off online forums where students tend to vent since you’ll only hear the negatives which can skew your perception. Go in expecting to work hard, but understand that it isn’t so bad and is very doable if you put in the work.