College is often spoken of as a dramatic transition into adulthood, a time for new experiences and “finding yourself.” Weirdly, I have been surprised by just how similar my life has stayed despite starting college, as well as how difficult at times it has still been to adjust to my “new life.” My weekday routine has seen minimal change besides having fewer classes and staying on campus, and I’ve found that the material in my classes now and what is expected of me as a student overlaps more than I had anticipated with high school. Still, there is a general feeling of being more on my own than before, both with work and in my daily life. I have had to adjust to being completely responsible for my own schedule, but the freedom I’ve had in how I spend my time has allowed me to learn a lot about my interests and develop new ones.
I will say that, despite the overlaps in content and workload between my high school and college courses, losing the structured “school day” and having much larger class sizes have held me more accountable for my own education and forced me to put more effort into managing my time and figuring out what work environments and schedules work best for me. As I become more involved on campus and start more major-related courses, this is sure to be even more of a challenge. One thing about UMD that did meet my expectations of what college would be like is the vast number of clubs and extracurricular activities, which I regret missing out on in high school as I was mainly focused on classwork. Joining clubs like the Terrapin Trail Club and Crochet for a Cause (even though I had little experience with hiking and none with crocheting before college) have helped me gain more of a sense of community here at school while adding to my college experience past my courses.
Starting the Science and Global Change program has further developed my interest in the environment, Earth’s systems, and conservation, and given me the chance to meet a great group of like-minded peers. Going into CPSG100, I expected the course to focus on why climate change was such a pressing issue and what can be done to reduce human activities that are exacerbating global change. I did not expect to spend most of the semester focusing on the processes that create climate and Earth’s natural systems, and more so I was not expecting the depth to which we explored logical fallacies and the “mistakes” people often make in thinking. However, reaching the end of the semester, it makes sense that, in order to address the effects of climate change, we must first understand exactly what climate is and how we can know that the changes we are witnessing are anthropogenic, as well as how pseudoscience and rhetorical fallacies spread and create challenges in communicating scientific knowledge to the public and addressing climate issues. I had expected to take part in a field trip during the semester, but I did not anticipate the wide range of excursion opportunities we would have access to, and certainly not a trip to New York City (which was super cool). Events like Service Day and excursions on and off campus gave me the chance to interact with other Scholars students who shared similar interests and connect our colloquium topics to other areas. Being able to code our own websites was not something I expected either, but I have enjoyed creating a space to compile my work for the program and document the semester.
My advice to any future students starting college would be to embrace the difficulty and change that often comes with your first semester and use it as an opportunity to learn more about your interests, goals, and learning style. Take the time to figure out what extracurricular activities you want to engage in and how you want to schedule your day, as these will help ground you even if classes become overwhelming. A big struggle for me at first was adjusting to living on my own and not having my friends from home. It was very important for me to learn that almost everyone was experiencing these same feelings, and that putting yourself out there is the first step toward building your community in college. Another piece of advice specifically for any future SGC students would be to use the weekly colloquium time and excursions to confront your pre-existing knowledge and beliefs surrounding climate change, science as a process, and how we as people think and generate knowledge. What you get out of this program is proportional to what you put in. Overall, it is very important to come into college with a want to grow as a person and a student.