Going into college, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect because my brother is a current senior here at UMD and I’ve talked to him extensively about his experience. I was wrong. I had no idea what a discussion was, how difficult it would become to wake up before 10 am and how independent you have to be to succeed. There was definitely a lot that I just had to figure out as I went.
I knew a little bit about what to expect in terms of class structures. I did know that most of the grades for my courses would be coming from a few exams, and that my classes would be lectures that I'd just take notes during. My COMM107 class however has less than 20 people, allowing us to do activities in class that involve participation of every student. It feels very similar to my high school classes. I didn’t expect any of my classes at such a big school to be like that, so walking into the tiny classroom on the first day was a big shock.
The whole attitude surrounding school is very different than I anticipated. A decent amount of people regularly skip lectures and classes, which is very apparent on exam days when the lecture halls are suddenly filled to capacity. I knew that college professors were a lot more relaxed than high school teachers, and most of my professors do go by their first names to students. I had seen many funny social media posts with extremely casual emails to their professors, however I failed to really make any relationships with my professors, and I would only expect my COMM107 professor to even know my name.
I went into CPSG100 expecting a lot of content about climate change and how we can make a difference to stop the dramatically changing climate we've caused on Earth. I wasn’t entirely wrong, as we touched on the definition and history of climate change, but I think I anticipated something more similar to what CPSG101 and CPSG200 are going to be like. I was surprised to learn about things like logical fallacies, how to read a scholarly article, and the honor code at UMD. While I didn’t expect to learn about these topics in lecture, they are the most applicable to daily life out of all the things I've learned in all of my classes. Not to mention they are topics I didn’t previously know anything about. Knowing all that I do now from colloquium about science and logical thinking has really prepared me to dive deeper into modern day climate change as I continue in SGC. Now I have the basic knowledge that I need to fully understand all the science behind it.
In terms of assignments, CPSG100 does remind me a lot of a high school class, which I didn’t expect. We have regular quizzes, in class assignments and no exams which I really like because it’s the least stressful of my classes. I have many opportunities to apply what I’ve learned in class in a relatively low stakes, graded way. I also didn’t expect any of my college classes to have graded attendance because college seems to have a big “its up to you to go to class and do what you have to do” attitude. In CPSG100 however students do get that external push from attendance to show up to class every week that we did in high school when attendance was always mandatory.
College life for me has thankfully lived up to my hopes rather than my expectations. My roommate and I are friends from high school which I was strongly advised to not do, but it's going great and we still get along really well. I also expected to really struggle to make new friends and meet new people. I’m pretty shy and had a lot of high school friends coming to UMD alongside me, but meeting new people here was shockingly easy. I didn’t anticipate how eager other people would also be to make friends in the beginning of the year, so everyone was so friendly and open to talking to new people.
Living in a dorm is pretty much exactly what I expected. Doing laundry and showering is awful, but I wasn’t expecting to live in luxury. Privacy is close to non-existent, as the farthest I can be from my roommate in our dorm is about 6 feet. I expected my RA to be harsher and us to have much more frequent inspections, but we’ve only had one inspection and my RA has never had any conflicts with the people on my floor.
My advice for a new student would be don't be afraid to meet new people. I haven’t met anyone here at UMD that I didn’t like, so put yourself out there! I would also recommend not taking more than 16 credits your first semester. College classes are a big step up from high school, and not to mention the fact that you're adjusting to a whole new environment at the same time. Take your first semester lighter so you can feel out college, get used to the routine, and have fun!