Evan's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

The structure, delivery, graded items, was the same as the expected University courses. I expected lectures to explain topics the course outlined. The delivery was informative and interesting, and I always looked forward to coming to lecture every week. However, the length of the colloquium sometimes made me want to stay home, but when looking at the lectures topics, motivation to come to class returned. We covered many topics about dinosaurs, which I didn’t expect. Out of classroom activities were a lot more enjoyable than expected, such as the service day and the new york trip. The New York trip was especially enjoyable, with the lectures and the exploring of the city being the most interesting parts of the experience. I thought the trips and out of classroom activities would be more about lectures and activities, and not as much freedom. The trip was a lot different from that, where the group gave a lot of free time to roam around the city. The destinations we visited in particular were a ramen place and many department stores such as UNIQULO and the Nintendo store, as well as some New York specialities, such as New York style pizza.

Classes such as CMSC 132 was fun and other courses such as ENGL101 were extremely tedious and boring. Many hours of busywork was spent in order to pass that class and I nearly died of boredom. INAG110 was a pleasant experience that I think is helpful with real world experiences and applications because of the presentation skills needed in a work environment setting. MATH240 was a class that you need to pay attention in, or else you will fall behind. Falling behind in classes in general is extremely hard to catch up on, because it will take many more hours of studying on your own in order to learn the material taught in class.

Life as a University student was hard at first because of my dorm situation. I had no air conditioning in my dorm, so when the heat wave of the first week rolled through, the heat was almost unbearable. Buying nearly 5 fans did nothing but circulate the hot air throughout the room. Only after 2 weeks had past had the heat subsided enough for me to comfortably relax on my bed and get sound sleep. University life is a lot different than high school vision of college life particularly because many of my high school friends also came to this campus. Being at college was more of a sleepover experience and was much more fun than I expected it to be. Also, I learned that loading up on coursework would be detrimental to my mental health as FOMO is real.

Some advice I would give to future SGC students in order to ease them into college life is to not be afraid to try out new things, make new friend, or talking to other people. Every individual in SGC is there for a reason, and because of that, the interactions you have with the people there are generally all extremely positive. I highly suggest making many new friends in SGC and obtaining contact information in order to stay in touch after colloquium and other things.

Last modified: 13 December 2021