Elliott's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

I can't really say what I expected when I came to college. College tours seemed like such a hassle, so I decided not to go on any. My mom thought that I wasn't putting enough thought or effort into the whole process, which I guess is true. I didn't really care where I went to college because I knew that I could have fun, make friends, and receive a quality education wherever I went. That being said, I'm glad that I came to College Park.

Coming into college, I had this idea of what classes would be like. I don't know if that image came from watching my older brothers go through college or if it was something that I derived from movies. Either way, actual college was pretty different from what I expected. For one thing, I thought that my courses would be a lot harder. Maybe it was because my high school's AP program prepared me well or because most of my classes were online, but so far, my courses have been much easier than what I expected. I have no doubt that as I progress through college, my courses will become more difficult, but the first semester wasn't terrible. The projects and assignments in my classes now are similar in difficulty to the assignments for my AP classes in high school, even if there is a more professional attitude towards them now. I've heard a lot of my peers vehemently condemn online classes; they don't like the communication, or they think it's harder to learn the material virtually, or some other concern. Personally, I have no problem with online classes. I can do asynchronous classes at my own pace, and I can rewind or pause lectures easily to take notes. Synchronous classes aren't bad either; I don't have to leave my room and face the brisk weather to get to class. As for the complaints that the material is hard to learn, I think I would hear those complaints even if classes were in person. I've found that if you take advantage of all the resources available to you and take the time to understand the material, you'll do fine.

CPSG100 also caught me off guard. When I first read "Science and Global Change", I thought that we would immediately delve into the science of global change and how global change is affecting the world today; I had no idea that we would spend so much time defining exactly what science is. Similarly, I didn't expect to go over pseudoscience. Once I began to read Kida and Sagan, I was surprised and interested by all the different examples and types of pseudoscience that were presented. I was amazed by how easily people fall for ridiculous hypotheses and hoaxes. Now that the first semester is over, I realize how little we went over the subject of global change. Really, only the past month was devoted to learning about global change, and a lot of that came from reading Kolbert. I thought that by this time, we might be learning about solutions to anthropogenic climate change. Talking about how to fix the mistakes that landed us in the position that we're in now is kind of like a light at the end of a dark depressing tunnel. Unfortunately, the tunnel seems pretty long. I remember reading the first chapter of The Sixth Extinction; it was a hard slap in the face, and it only got worse from there. Finally, in the last chapter, Kolbert spent a few pages saying, "but wait, it's not all bad." I don't know if I'm alone on this, but the slightly uplifting final chapter was completely overshadowed by the 258 pages that came before it. The other part of CPSG is the out-of-class activities. I don't really know how much I can speak about them when you consider how much of the class was virtual this year. I think the only things that I did that were in person was meet with my peer mentor and go to the National Zoo for my excursion. I guess it was nice to meet and hang out with some of my classmates in person, but I'm hoping that next year there are more opportunities to get out of the classroom, as well as more fulfilling opportunities than just going to the zoo.

In high school, I never had a very specific vision of what college life would be like. This was nice because it allowed me to easily adapt once I got here. Mostly, I was just glad to get out of my parents' house. My family's my family, but they're also really annoying. Now that I've been here for a few months, I can't think of anything that was a major disappointment; I just thought that it was nice to live on my own and roam around a campus as big as College Park. The one thing that was different from what I thought college would be like is the roommate situation. My oldest brother also went to UMD, and his freshman year, he was in a forced triple. I thought that I would have at least one roommate; it was a pleasant surprise to find out I would have the entire space to myself.

To finish up, I would like to leave some advice for future students. Don't stress about making friends. Everyone else is in the same situation as you; they've just been put into a relatively foreign environment and also want to make friends. In the first couple of weeks, my entire floor went out and played soccer or grabbed food together almost every day. It was almost unnoticeable how fast I went from knowing no one, hanging out with a floor full of strangers, to having the close-knit friend group that I have now.

Last modified: 10 December 2020