Coming to the University of Maryland from a medium-sized high school it Howard County was quite a shot, the amount of information and activities going on in a single palace were quite overwhelming at first for me and took me a while to figure out. In doing so and completing my coursework, my class on statics, or the study of forces on structures that are not moving became a focal point for me. Not only was it the single hardest class that I had ever had and I was putting in 15 hours per week on its homework, but despite that the applications of what I was learning were really exciting to me. Our final project in that class was mathematically engineering a wooden truss bridge, me and a group made a small 2-foot-long truss that weighed 0.2lb and supported over 700 lbs. For me, ENES102 was the start of me feeling like an engineering student and not just a STEM student, and I look back on that as the start of actually approaching problems with a real engineering perspective. Diving into the class and doing all of the practice exams and proactive problems along with embracing the terminology and problem-solving approach was great for me. The hours of work allowed me to start figuring out what times I was good at doing different types of work and helped me to develop and work and study schedule that allowed me to achieve good grades in classes when in high school I pretty much never studied and did most of my work inside of other classes.
If there was one thing that I probably should have done differently it would have been more interacting and relation-building with faulty in my hard classes, most of my instructors were very nice and happy to answer questions at appropriate times, though I mostly just attended lectures and studied and did work solo or with a group, some of my TA’s have built pretty decent relationships with and those were useful in clearing up questions and making general live easier as a whole. I would do it more if I redid freshmen year, but for anyone who may read this, it's not hard, and it's beneficial, just sitting near the front and pleasantry go a long way in starting a conversation with people and I would highly recommend it.
The same goes for building relationships with classmates, just saying hello or asking questions to the person next to you at the start of the semester is invaluable in building friendships and study resources as the semester progresses, without so I would have been far more confused and stressed out at many points. Don't be afraid to ask for help from the people in your classes, it will not be useful later on, instead of just being confused, make an effort to seek the sources and support of everyone else around you who are also trying to do that same thing. Make sure to make plenty of time to relax and attempt to have a good balance between school and exploring the many social activities that are here at the university.
Looking back on it, what I was least prepared for was what is emphasized in learning here, in high school most things were about memorizing the big things and not worrying about anything else whereas, at the university, I feel that much more emphasis on the details of the things, and not only what those details are but diving deeper into what makes them work and how we can express them as anything other than a visual or physical thing, at least that’s what I’ve felt as a mechanical engineering student. Expressing everything in terms of variables, numbers, and expressions was a hard switch for my brain to make and something that I was not prepared for. But it was one of those things that just having an open mind about and an honest attempt went a long way with for me at least, if you put in the work the University of Maryland can be a great place to go college.