Throughout my first two semesters at the University of Maryland, I have been surprised quite a few times. The first class that came as a surprise to me was my first physics lab, PHYS275. I took this class first semester of freshman year, and it has been one of my favorite classes so far at the university. It was a class that portrayed different concepts of Physics 1 through experiments. However, it also taught me to be proficient in Excel, which I have continued to apply in numerous other classes after. There was also an emphasis on probability and error, which gave me my first exposure to actual computations of plausibility and chi-square. All my high school classes were AP Physics, AP Literature, AP Calculus, etc. This was my first real experimental class, as well as my first exposure to any equations related to concepts such as sigma, chi-square, and p-value. This class is just the first required lab for the physics major, but I know there are students who are math majors who have taken the class as well, so it is open to other majors. If a student wanted to take this class, they could talk to their advisor about taking it and use it to satisfy some of their Gen-Ed graduation requirements. I learned a lot from this class because I completed everything almost completely independently. I know that in the more recent semester, the labs were completed in partners due to there being a higher number of students in the class. To get the most out of the class, I would recommend that students complete the labs separately or ensure that they are not just letting their partner do half of the work. Working each lab individually all of the way through and understanding how to utilize Excel for each experiment and computation allowed me to learn more than I would have if I had split the work with a partner. It also forced me to actively think and work through issues without help, which is important in an introductory class such as this, where the actual physics concepts are relatively straightforward, and the challenge come more from putting all of the pieces together. This proceeds from conducting the actual experiment, to properly recording and transferring data, to deriving equations and applying the data to them, to then evaluating and analyzing these results.

As well as interesting and surprising classes, there are also interesting and surprising teachers. However, it can be difficult to develop relationships with faculty in college. Sometimes this is due to it seeming daunting or intimidating, or simply because of large class sizes. My greatest success with developing a relationship with faculty has come from asking teachers about their personal interests. I was able to ask little questions to one of my professors, from inquiring what anime is pictured on his shirt, to where his accent is from when I noticed he has a way of pronouncing his "o"s. I recommend overcoming the intimidating nature of teachers by just remembering that they are people to and treating them as such (although still with respect of course). Also, if a student genuinely enjoys a course, I think they should tell the professor. It means a lot to a teacher for their student to come up to them after lecture and just tell them that they enjoyed class that day. This helps to foster a relationship between student and teacher, or it can serve to simply show appreciation to the professor and what they are doing.

While at the beginning of the first semester I was not prepared to foster relationships with teachers, I was even less prepared to manage my time on my own when I had no deadlines. I have always had a bad habit of only being productive when I had a deadline. This led to me cramming before tests and projects. I recommend that prospective students and incoming freshmen establish good habits and academic discipline before beginning college, since you will have to be responsible for yourself.

However, being responsible for yourself does not mean that you will be alone. Friendships are incredibly important to form in college, although they can be difficult to initiate. When I first got to UMD, I was extremely homesick for about two weeks. I wanted my friends to visit, and I was miserable. I am glad that I am an out of state student, or I may have developed a bad habit of going home on the weekends. For me, the scariest part about pursuing new friendships is just starting a conversation. I have a large group of friends from home, and two of them are people I have known since second grade. The other ten are people I have grown to love throughout my life, but I don't remember ever having to seek them out and get to know them, as happened organically, through mutual friends or classes. In college, when you don't know anyone, it is terrifying. Especially as an out of state student when everyone else seemed to know each other from high school, and I was all alone. However, once I got through the first two weeks, I had little classroom friendships that I was able to foster into real relationships. I found my best friends, however, in a lounge in my dorm in the middle of the night. I was passing through, and I met someone watching a show on the TV. I ended up watching it with him for three hours and he is now one of my closest friends. The lounge was on the eighth floor of my building. I lived on the third floor, and my new friend lived on the seventh. The next day, he introduced me to his friends that live on the eighth floor. These people are now my closest college friends. This happened because I happened to meet someone by chance, and then I was open to meeting more people through him. I cannott picture my freshman year without these people in it. Because I live in Cumberland, most of these people are in Scholars as well. Once of them is in SGC with me, and the rest are mostly in ETE and PL. Befriending these people allowed me to really settle into everyday life at college, away from home and all my long-established friendships. I now always have people that I can go to Mckeldin with, or on a day trip to DC. I also have a lot of overlapping classes with them, so I have, and freshmen should, use their connections to better themselves academically. One of my friends described me as having "an army of tutors" when throughout one night, three of the people in our friend group helped with three different assignments for various classes. The people that I have surrounded myself with have proved to be tremendous support emotionally, socially, and academically. Freshman should be openminded, and willing to meet anyone that they can. They should remember that everyone is nervous, and they just need to be patient and have faith that everything will work out the way it is supposed to.