While my first year at the University of Maryland has certainly been different and weird for obvious reasons, there is still a lot of positives that I have taken away from my freshman year of college. I am happy with my performances in class and the achievements that I have made. I found it difficult to succeed at times, especially during this semester, but with enough determination and effort, I achieved what I wanted.
For me this year, the class that came as the biggest surprise to me was my landscape architecture course, LARC160. I had never taken a class in this field, or anything close to it, however, I still really enjoyed it. This was far past anything that had been offered at my high school, and I wanted to try something new that I never got the chance to experience in high school. I initially discovered this class because it fulfilled one of my gen ed requirements, and it sounded like one of the more interesting ones. Given how much I have enjoyed this class, even though it seemed to be out of my comfort zone at first, I would highly recommend it and plan to take more landscape architecture courses in the future. I would recommend to future students that for your general education credits, that you take some classes that you may not think are right, and to use these credits to see what classes are for you, and what are not.
The ability to build relationships with faculty members is very important. I feel like I have not gotten to know my professors as well as I would like, given that I have only attended college virtually. However, these relationships that I have built so far are still very important. I would recommend to any incoming student that they build good relationships with their professors for multiple reasons. It will make classes much more enjoyable, and it can lead to future opportunities working with those professors, which is especially important if those professors work in areas that you are interested in.
Just as important as the relationships with faculty members, if not more important, are the relationships that you have with your fellow students. Befriending other students has greatly helped me in adjusting to college life, as those who are not freshmen can provide vital information about college life. Friends in college can help you in so many ways. The biggest obstacle to these relationships right now is the virtual environment, but in regular times the biggest obstacle is forming these relationships initially.
I think that the portion of my freshman year that I was least prepared for was the different methods of learning and teaching that I experienced. While part of this could simply be that I have been to college virtually, I think that the teaching style varies more than I thought. I have to teach myself a lot more for some of my classes, and then others, not so much. I was not expecting this coming into college and would recommend that incoming freshman know how to handle learning stuff on your own.