To say the least, this semester has been far from what I expected college to be like when I was in high school. While this is partially because of the pandemic, there have been other things, uninfluenced by the pandemic, that was different than I thought they were going to be before college. Even after I learned that I was going to be doing the whole of my first semester online, there were parts of my classes that still were different from my expectations. For my classes besides CPSG100, the structure of my classes was pretty similar to what I expected from the semester despite them being online. The majority of my classes had lectures that were synchronous and were mostly based on PowerPoint, as I had expected. However, the thing that was most surprising to me was the assignments that I was given in many of them. Going into college, I believed that the majority of my grade in classes was going to be tests and quizzes, with very few other assignments or projects to go along with them. However, my classes were vastly different from this expectation. I had large projects in almost every single one of my classes, and many smaller assignments that were graded for many of them as well. Another thing about my classes that went against my expectations was the fact that a few of my classes had no tests or quizzes of any type. In fact, I only have one class that has midterms and finals. However, I do not know if these classes normally have tests, but just didn't because we are online or not, but either way I had very few. Another thing that was surprising about this semester to me was that lots of my classes had some material that I learned asynchronously, which I honestly did not enjoy as much because it was often more difficult.
In CPSG100 there were also multiple things about the class that surprised me. Going into the semester, I thought that we would be focusing more on the science side, and focusing more on climate change and the actual causes and consequences of them. However, for the majority of the semester, we learned about and discussed topics related to thinking and pseudoscience. This was definitely something that I did not expect we would be covering this semester. I also did not think we would be specifically looking at the rock record and what that can tell us about climate change, but rather I figured we would talk more broadly about climate change and its effects. The out-of-classroom activities were also very different from what I expected. I expected more activities that were more hands-on, however, this mostly changed because of the pandemic. However, I also expected there to be more activities that were group activities, considering scholars is a living-learning community, but there were only a few, and much less than I expected.
As I have stayed at home for this entire semester, my vision of college life was very, very different from what it has ended up being. Since I have been at home, I have no real clue what real college life will look like, and I am sure that it will most likely be surprising when I have the chance to be back on campus. There have been quite a few social events throughout the school, but none of them have been like what I imagined. While this is definitely due to the pandemic, this probably won't change soon. I am going to have to wait at least one more semester before I get to experience true college life. In some ways, I am disappointed not to have been able to be on campus this semester, and for that matter next semester, and I feel like I have missed out on a lot. I was also somewhat disappointed that the whole semester and next semester are online because I believe that I could learn somewhat better if the classes were in person, as opposed to being online.
While I cannot give a lot of advice, as I have not experienced what a true college semester will be like, I still have some. I would recommend to incoming students to prioritize schoolwork over other events, especially in the first semester, since the uptick in workload is so great. I found myself behind on some things because I wasted time at other points in the semester. It can be difficult to do this much work, but I would suggest that you keep your head up and try not to stress too much. I also suggest to others that you should find something beneficial to do in some of the free time that you have. For me, this has been running. By exercising almost daily, I have been able to focus better and have been less stressed. Finding something that you enjoy and something that will help you is important.