As a whole, my university experience was nothing different from the life I lived in high school. The difficulty of classes and my life routine are similar to high school. I expected classes to be harder, and my dorm life to be majorly worse than my home life. In reality, classes are as easy if not easier than high school, and dorms are acceptable. SGC as a whole was nothing crazy different from what I expected.
Beginning with the difficulty of classes, it has been disappointing. I had hoped that university would challenge me academically, but it was likely easier than high school. From what I’ve seen, my classes are not necessarily easy. The two “main” classes I am taking are Calculus 3 (MATH241) and introductory electromagnetism (PHYS272). I have seen people failing exams and struggling with the class, but some are doing well. These classes were always seen as “difficult” by me at a younger age, something more complex and difficult than what I had learned in high school. But I had sadly realized that these are merely concepts that are the next steps, and not necessarily more difficult. These topics are built upon what I have learned and do not have any concepts that are necessarily more difficult to understand.
I will most likely end up with a GPA of 3.94, and 4.0 if I perform well enough with some luck. This seemed no different than high school, where I could get a D on my final exams due to my high grades throughout the school year. For example, in MATH241, I could get a C and maintain my A final grade. However, the only difficulty I have experienced is the poor design of courses. The two general education courses I am taking this semester have been my least favorite. They have issues with course design alongside grading and exam/assignment design. These are not difficult classes due to their content but merely inconveniences that annoy me rather than challenging.
My expectations for SGC have been met. I expected some sort of environmental science course added with history, this was rather close to reality. The HTML sections of the class were outside of my expectations but weren’t anything that I found revolting. The excursions were also outside of my expectations and they were fine. Wholistically, the program was nothing crazy different from what I expected. Class and homework were not anything crazy hard or complicated.
As for my life and routine, it was not as bad as I expected it to be. I expected dorm life to be atrocious, where I could never sleep due to noise, and the cleanliness of the buildings to be of utmost disgustingness. In reality, it was fine. Things weren’t that dirty, just bad at times due to others on the floor. The noise is bad at times but not too exhausting, this may just be luck. This “positive” reaction to dorm life could be a result of my roommate. He is a chill person who does not cause lots of noise and we share a close sleep schedule. Additionally, we have not had any fights throughout the semester and this may make my dorm experience better than others. Lastly, my dorm experience may have been higher than others as I just had lots of free time to just relax and am someone who is content with what I have.
As for advice, I would recommend living your own life. This means to be who you are without caring about other’s perspectives, to an extent. I’d say that I existed with a neutral variation of myself and kept who I was in private. It’s really up to anyone to express as much as they’d like. I guess I just like keeping to myself unless necessary or I enjoy a person’s company. But I feel this advice would be helpful and applicable to many people. Where I feel most people nowadays play the roles of the average person of this age range. This is done to just feel out the smaller hints dropped by others to then decide if they’re someone they’d like to associate/interact with.
Lastly, I would advise people to try to challenge themselves. I felt that I did not do so this semester and therefore was just unmotivated to do work and really saw close to no purpose of doing my work other than “I have to”. It is a nice thing to find your limits and test them. There’s a sense of accomplishment to this as well as reaching your true potential. I primarily promote this for the philosophical relief that you are not wasting your life away. Though these remarks may be something that only I believe and may be found as “odd” by others.