My first semester at the University of Maryland taught me a lot about living on a college campus and the experience of college. Through Science and Global Change (SGC), my living-learning community, I have gotten to experience a plethora of activities and events that I would not have had the opportunity to do without the program. From an exciting service day filled with blooming connections over trialing work, to group trips to museums, I feel that I have put the most into my first semester. Even outside of SGC I have made my way through the semester learning everyday about college and how to navigate through this completely different lifestyle. I have met countless new people, spent time growing academically and socially, and found new interests I did not know I had. Over the course of this semester, I found that there were many pre-conceived notions about college that were proven wrong. Along with this, there were a few stereotypes about college that still hold true.
The structure of college class differs in a few ways from high school. I do not think I was ready for the amount of free time I have in college. When I entered college, I was expecting to be busy all the time. While this is true sometimes, I find that most of the time I have a lot of free time. However, this does not mean there is not a lot of work to do. College classes are significantly harder than high school classes, which I expected. Yet, I did not expect the sheer amount of studying I would have to do when midterms and finals season rolled around. While there is a lot of free time, it is up to me to determine how to spend that time. I found that it was constructive to manage my time well to balance academics, social life, and hobbies. Another thing I did not expect was the structure of my classes. I do not know if this is specifically due to the major I am pursuing or if all college classes are like this, but a majority of my grades are determined by exams. While high school grades were definitely impacted heavily by exams, I do not think that the exams in high school had the ability to make or break my grades. Fortunately, I have put a lot of work into studying in order to keep good grades in my courses, which I am grateful for.
SGC has proven to be a helpful course in my understanding of scientific thinking. If I am honest, I had no idea what to expect from SGC. I was not really sure what the program had to offer. I was definitely surprised when I started the class reading Thomas Kida exploring pseudoscience. SGC threw me into a world of scientific thinking that I had never experienced before. Learning about logical fallacies was probably my favorite part of SGC. I have always wanted to learn about this subject since I was used to these terms being used in debate. So, when it was mentioned in Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World, I was surprised and excited to finally explore this part of science.
I thought the outside-of-classroom activities in SGC would be similar to high school field trips because that was what I was used to. These trips are heavily chaperoned and micromanaged; however, SGC trips were full of free time and allowed us to explore on our own as students. In SGC, I participated in Service Day, the D.C. trip, the New York City trip, and a self-sanctioned lecture event. All of these events were led by the students, and it was our job to explore and learn about the objectives at hand.
Living on campus is the best decision I could have made for my first semester in college. From living with one of my best friends to meeting countless people from around campus, I could not have been happier with my experience living on campus. University life is definitely more freeing, but I also found that it is actually very helpful to my productivity. My proximity to classes, study areas, and other students who I can study with has been extremely helpful to my success this semester.
My advice to any future SGC student is to take advantage of all the opportunities that SGC provides. Sign up for as many trips as possible, connect with people in the community, and most importantly take time to understand what SGC is about.