This past summer I felt both very anxious but also excited to start college and experience a major change for the first time in a couple years. I expected to fit the college kid stereotype: staying up all night working on homework, hardly getting any sleep, always on the go, and wearing sweats everywhere. While some of my expectations were right, I learned a lot of things were different than I had anticipated.
I had been told before starting college that the structure of everything is different. I heard the lectures consist of tons of note taking and was told it'd be hard to keep up. I thought that I would have to resort to taking notes on my laptop because physical notes wouldn't be fast enough to keep up. I also thought the discussions would be boring, pointless, and not worth attending. I expected the material to be significantly more difficult and hard to keep up with. Through the past four months I've come to learn that many of these expectations were inaccurate and college was made out to be more complex than it really is. My schedule is relatively light and I don't find it very difficult getting to and from class on time. Lectures are very different than I had expected, as they're given at a pace that allows for you to take sufficient notes by hand and the material is usually explained well enough for you to understand and continue to follow what's going on throughout the lecture. I've been able to take notes by hand which personally helps me learn much better and feel more organized. Discussions were also very different from what I expected, as they were more engaging than expected, they sometimes give graded work to do during discussion, and the TA's are often more helpful than the professors themselves. I was shocked at how much of the total schoolwork is done in class. I expected at least half of my work to be done in class, but learned that almost all of it is done outside of class which was drastically different from what I was used to in high school. My schoolwork is more difficult than the work I had in high school, not impossibly hard, but still challenging.
There were multiple topics covered in the colloquiums that I didn't expect going into this course/program. We went very in depth on the scientific method, diving into its origins, why it's important, how to properly use it, how NOT to use it, etc. Something else that was covered in class that I didn't expect was the tons of fallacies, what they entail, and how they're used. HTML was something else I didn't expect to use in this course. I expected to learn more about dinosaurs given the professors are paleontologists. We did discuss dinosaurs, but I was expecting a LOT of the course to focus on dinosaurs as they could be related to historic climate changes. I expected some work outside of class, but did not expect activities outside of class like Service Day, the Metro Hunt, and the NYC AMNH trip. I enjoyed all three of these activities and had fun during all of them and I encourage future students to look forward to these events.
University life is much different from what I expected college life to be like while in high school. I didn't anticipate how often I'd be worrying and stressed out about time. Throughout the semester I often felt like I didn't have ample time to finish everything I needed to. Even when I didn't have lots of work to do I was often stressed about managing my time. I didn't realize how much time I'd spend outside walking, which made walking to classes during the colder months more difficult and dreadful. College as a whole is almost entirely different from what I expected but I've enjoyed it so far and I like the change. It's nice to be away from home and completely changing what I do on a daily basis.
I think future SGC students should try to meet as many people as possible and make as many connections as they can. I've found it extremely helpful to have an arsenal of friends so you can keep your options broad, as well as get help from multiple perspective when you face challenges. Keeping track of things you need to get done and determining what you're going to prioritize is also another habit I've found to be helpful for getting more work done and keeping stress down. It's easy to lay in bed all day and tell yourself "I'll do it tomorrow", but it's so much better in the long run to get up and do that project or homework assignment while you have the downtime. With all this being said, remember to give yourself breaks and learn to space things out to postpone burnout.