Hello reader! I am Cristopher Carranza, at about the cusp of summer 2026, I am now a sophomore finishing my 1st year as a civil engineering major. This spring semester has had a lot of surprises. One of them I wasn’t expecting was a random course I took as a gened for history, HIST123, history of subsaharan africa from 1800’s onwards. This class is a sleeper hit. I didn’t know what to expect partially because the public school education of countries that are not the UK or the US is very lacking here. Inside the course itself, I found constantly changing socioeconomic and humanitarian issues caused by the landslide shift of African societies by the cultural exchange and arrival of Europeans. That class was a great overview of an evolving problem caused by the history of technology, culture, ethics and international relationships. I liken it to the CPSG courses because it had the same effect of widening knowledge of a problem by examining individual systems that are close to it, like how we analyzed conspiracies, the scientific method, and the process of research to better understand climate change. My method for finding great classes would be to scroll through testudo for relevant gen ed courses, choosing one that seems interesting and revising planet terp reviews to make sure the course is reasonable to your time and ability. Gened credits if you need them, interesting topics that you might not know about and a good, or at least liked professor makes for a good experience. Very similar to the engl120 course of Shakespeare I took last semester. Came in having read half a play and came out having read 8 with a keen appreciation for Shakespeare writing and an understanding of the historical circumstances and ideas that influenced his writing.
When it comes to developing relationships with faculty, you have to be a hunter. I don’t mean literally. I mean that a certain level of strategy and action has to be taken to do so. The easiest method is having the foresight to apply to programs where you’re interacting with faculty in a more casual or consistent manner. With time you’ll have made enough contact naturally through the process to be personally connected to them. A personal example of this is the LSAMP Bridge program where you’re connected with staff and mentors over the course of a summer with team building activities to initiate rapport and mentor like relationships. Outside of these programs a more active effort has to be made. Classes are short, sometimes too short to build a relationship, so arriving early to class, participating, emailing within reasonable hours and showing up for office hours helps profs or TA’s remember your face and build a helpful relationship. Strategy comes in the form of gauging how receptive a certain professor is to developing a mentoring relationship. Just like people, professors can be prickly, nice, mean, sweet, angry and everything in between so use empathy and a little bit of context to gauge how receptive people are.
Now comes my personal hardest spot of college, creating friends with peers, YAAY. YOU NEED FRIENDS, it is not optional, friends help you regulate your emotions, spend time happily, and are your network for all things college! A good friend who knows their stuff can save you time from the knowledge of their personal experiences and can serve as a role model for you to better handle the demands of college. It's a mutual relationship as you can inform each other of opportunities, assignments, events and what not. College is also so unbelievably kafkaesque sometimes that it feels great to sob about your complaints to somebody, or at the very least have someone you know will do the group project. The biggest thing to making friends is being open to conversation, whenever you start a new class for example, making small talk could be the difference between not saying a word for the same class for a semester, or making a lifelong friend. Its scary to be in a new place and chat with new people but it's arguably scarier to be in that same place without knowing a soul because you were too apprehensive. Once you have somebody locked in you’re now in a cold war era spy network, report ANYTHING of relevance, college is so big information slips through the cracks everywhere. Having people means you can share information to survive like our neolithics ancestors intended.
I was the least prepared for the time management involved in college. The hardest part of college is knowing yourself and your needs and scheduling your day around that so that you pass, don’t go insane, and finish this 4 year (or more) marathon of a journey. There's so many considerations surrounding just the course times you sign up for on testudo. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you walk or use alternate forms of transport? Do you commute or live on campus? Do you like a long streak of classes or time in between? There are so many considerations and each of those have an incremental impact on how you feel throughout the year. If you know the conditions you need to work your best, you can schedule your day around that and make college just that much easier. There's also the aspect of diversity, people aren’t study bots (sadly and happily), so time outside is needed, exercise, socialization, hygiene, hobbies, studying outside of class, projects etc. To say it concisely, be mindful of what you need, and how you need to schedule in order to get it done in a nice way. College isn’t impossible, it isn’t the DMV, there is light on the end of the tunnel you just have to keep walking and smell the underground tunnel roses on the way.