Ezra Gallun's Time Capsule Reflection Essay

The Essay:
My first year at the University of Maryland was full of ups and downs. Somehow, my freshman year turned out to be the most fun and also the most stressful and academically challenging year of my life. I came into this year expecting that freshman classes would be easy and introductory, but in reality I was met with challenging material right from the start.

The course so far that has been the biggest surprise to me was a class I took this semester called ENES100. It’s a group project class where I was thrown into a group with 7 random strangers and we were told to build a robot to complete a given task. I had experience in robotics previously, having been on my high school robotics team, but I never had to coordinate a project like this in such a short amount of time with people I didn’t know.

Despite my initial worries, this project ended up being the most fun I’ve ever had in a class up to this point. My groupmates were all awesome people and the class material was super fun. I recommend for incoming students to try to find classes where they can collaborate freely with a group, where the stakes aren’t super high if they want the same experience I had.

In college, there are a lot of opportunities to get to know and interact with your professors and TAs, which wasn’t an option for me in high school. Professors are always looking for people to be TAs for their classes in the future and TAs are always looking to help their students and connect with them. In one of my lab classes last semester, the class and I ended up getting very close with our graduate TA and he became a very helpful resource for all of us. He even told us about the lab where he was working and where we could apply!

I would say the biggest obstacle to getting close with faculty is time. A lot of faculty are busy when they’re not giving lectures or at office hours, so it can be difficult to get a hold of these people. For incoming students, I would strongly recommend going to office hours for professors and TAs whenever you need support and definitely make a strong presence by sitting in the front in your classes.

Adjusting to university life was definitely a challenging experience for me, as I had to adjust to living away from home, with a roommate and in a totally new environment. The most helpful thing when learning to adjust to college is definitely having strong connections with other people. When I was struggling with becoming consistent with my new routine, my roommate invited me to work out at Eppley with him and since then we go together every week.

During the welcome week is the easiest time to meet people because there are no classes. The biggest obstacle to overcome is social nervousness. A lot of people are too scared to go talk to someone new, but incoming students should realize that they’re all in the same boat, and many people are just waiting for you to start the conversation. The best way to make use of these connections is to rely on your friends when you’re having trouble. Early in the semester, one of my friends came to me about relationship trouble, and since then we’ve been inseparable.

In retrospect, I was definitely least prepared for the time management part of college. In high school when teachers would assign work there were always lenient late policies and plenty of time to get everything done so I would sweep work under the rug until right before it was due, but that strategy doesn’t work in college with the heavy weight on exams. Incoming freshmen should definitely research time management strategies and start to employ them in their high school life, to build strong habits for college.

Last modified: 8 May 2026