The immense differences between high school and college honestly took me by surprise. I was lucky enough to come onto campus an entire week early due to marching band camp, but that week still was not enough to adjust and get a grasp on this new life. One of the first things I realized was that its a lot more difficult to communicate with your professor. Generally, if your class has more than 50ish students, there are many barriers between you and your professor that make them feel quite distant. The professor of a large class will normally ask you to contact the TAs if you have questions instead of them, and the TAs also do all of the study and information sessions, as well as most announcement emails. I ended up barely interacting at all with my first semester professors, as that wall seemed impossible to breech. In my second semester, I made better attempt to contact my professors and make myself a recognizable face in the class, allowing the class to be more engaging and encapsulating.
The greatest success I had with creating a relationship between myself and faculty was in my second semester COMM107 class. It was a relatively small class, only about 18 people, and my professor was very accessible and friendly which allowed my classmates and I to bond with him individually. This was an eye opening class, as my professor, Dr. Foster, was a very straight forward guy and showed us a completely different approach to teaching. Each and every student in that class felt like an individual and that their voice was heard, which is not something I've experienced in any other class so far. If you're looking for a more personal way of learning, I highly recommend taking a class such as a GenED or elective with relatively few students early on into your college career. I ended up forming such a great bond with Dr. Foster that he wrote me a recommendation letter for an internship I was applying to, a huge bonus for making nice relationships.
One of the best resources I've found for meeting like minded individuals is to attend gss sessions or other group study activities. Go out of your way to say hi next to someone you're sitting next to in class, as having someone, literally anyone, to talk to can make a class much more bearable. I've made a great deal of friends from my smaller classes as well as a fair amount from larger classes. People are friendlier than you think, and even if you get rejected there are thousands of others in your major and similar majors who I guarantee share your interests. Without the many aquantances I've formed throughout my classes, I would be performing much worse and would be in a far worse mental state. Its very important to be able to complain and laugh and enjoy a class or your study with someone else, so I highly suggest one of the first things you do in college is find a small group that you fit in to.
If you're a STEM major and you have to take a chemistry lab, there is absolutely NO way you could prepare for such an event. I had no idea that the one credit, weekly 3 hour block would end up being one of my most difficult classes. But, there are ways to deal with labs! Stay on top of your work and don't let yourself fall behind. Take advantage of your TAs!!! They want to help you succeed and generally know how to go about answers those questions that the lab coordinator knows you never learned yet puts on the Post Lab Questions anyway. In the end, know that the semester WILL end and everything will be alright. Don't stress too much about a single grade or a single class, I promise you will make it where you want to make it if you try hard enough.