Charles Hammond's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

My first semester at the University of Maryland has been much different than anything I could have imagined. Coming into college from high school, I expected the classes to have a similar structure and the professors to have a similar demeanor as they did in high school. But I soon found out that this was absolutely not the case. I learned that classes were split into either lectures or discussions which I had never heard of until arriving at college. The lectures had the professor stand at the front of class and tell us new information while the discussions were ran by TAs, with the occasional appearance from the professor, who went over practice problems with us. The delivery of information seems much less personal than it did in high school which due to the large class sizes. There are over 100 people in some of my lectures which makes it impossible for the professor to stop and give extra personal attention to one person during the lecture. The professors also do not have time to yell at people or care if someone shows up late or falling behind in class because of the number of people. This puts a lot more pressure on students to take personal accountability over how they are doing in their courses. There is also less graded work done in class than I would have expected. Most of the assignments that I get are homework and are usually not touched on in class, so I have to take lots of care to keep track of what assignments I have due. Overall, the classes are a lot less interactive than I thought and place a higher emphasis on being responsible for your own grade and work habits than in high school.

In the Science and Global Change class, I was surprised by the information we covered this semester. There was a lot more information about scientific thinking than examples of science that we had to study and memorize which was surprising. The information about scientific thinking also included logical fallacies and how to avoid falling trap to pseudoscience. I did not expect to learn about what science actually is and how to identify when something is not scientific. I also did not expect to learn about geology and extinction in this class. I interpreted the course as studying current change, but this course has shown me if we do not study change throughout history, we cannot study or drive current change. I am surprised that we did not talk too much about the sort of changes happening in the world today. We were informed about climate change and showed the overwhelming amount of data supporting that human activity is causing the climate to become warmer, but we were not told as much about what we can do to fix it or other problems facing the world today. There were also more outside activities than I anticipated. The Service Day at the beginning of the semester helped us learn ways to get involved in the community and the excursions provided us with unique opportunities to learn about topics related to the course. I went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City which was a great experience. I learned a lot about how information is collected from samples and I also got to visit New York City for the first time. The out of class activities provide a nice mix of learning and fun that complement the class nicely.

One of the biggest adjustments to being a college student is living in a dorm on campus with a roommate. Luckily, I am able to room with one of my best friends so I get along with him well and I lived in the same room as my brother at home so this part only took a few days to get used to. Something that is very big is not having my family around to remind me of my responsibilities. My mom was always a big help in keeping me organized with everything I had to do or work I needed to complete so not having her around to pressure me to get things done was a big adjustment. Also having a space that I can call my own and do almost whatever I want with was a new and fun experience. Having a dining hall that I can go to whenever I'm hungry is also something different that I really enjoy about living on campus. Something that is different from what I thought college life would be like is the amount of time in between and after classes that I have to decide what to do with. Most of it gets taken up by homework but I still have more time than I anticipated before coming here. To any upcoming SGC students I would say do not stress about college. It does have some differences from high school and the first week or 2 can take some adjusting, but once you get a feel for what college life is like it will be fun.

Last modified: 7 December 2024