Arriving on campus in August, I was dreading the large 300-person lecture halls and listening to some version of the teacher from Ferris Buellers Day Off. I heard that the only thing my professors expect from me is to turn in my work on time and take the exams from teachers, friends parents, and people I struck up a conversation with in line at the grocery store. My brain conjured up all sorts of ideas of 20-page essays and seemingly endless physics worksheets. Thats pretty much what I gathered from my first 2 classes of my fall semester, which were a 250-person math lecture and a 300-person chemistry lecture. However, as the day went on, my classes got smaller and smaller. It went from those lectures to a 15-person English class and a 30-person engineering class. These smaller classes were incredibly engaging and instantly gave me a different outlook on what college courses would be like. Despite being an engineering major whose high school life was spent obsessing over STEM, aside from CPSG100, my English class quickly became one of my favorite classes, simply because the professor was so caring and engaging. I began to see this in all of my professors at UMD, even the ones in the giant lecture halls. It made all of the classes more bearable. All of the assignments provided opportunities to practice what I had learned and to prepare myself for the midterm exams that were looming ahead. Ive thoroughly enjoyed this semester of college, and the classes have very pleasantly surprised me. Consider my vision of the teacher from Ferris Buellers Day Off repeating, Anyone? Anyone?, erased from my imagination.
As for CPSG100, we covered a lot of what I expected. I took AP Environmental Science, so I had some familiarity with what we were learning going into the course. However, I learned so much more in CPSG100 than I expected. It made everything seem so much more interesting. Despite having learned a lot of the material before, I was surprised to learn so much about climate change and the world around me. I didnt expect to cover the different scientific thinking principles such as parsimony or falsifiability. I also didnt expect to explore pseudoscience and why it spreads. I was very grateful that we covered these topics because I never really thought about them until I learned about them in CPSG100. Once I did, I looked back and remembered all of the times Ive encountered the examples of pseudoscience we talked about. Personally, being a kid who grew up fishing and SCUBA diving, I wish we had covered more about coral bleaching and the specific effects of climate change on marine life. Coral bleaching is the main reason I got into the STEM and environmental engineering, and since Im not covering any environmental issues in any of my other classes, I hoped we would go more in depth in CPSG100. The outside-the-classroom activities were incredibly fun and engaging. They really helped me connect with the other scholars in the class, especially service day. Despite being out in the sun and hauling giant wheelbarrows of plants up a hill all day, I really connected with a lot of students and made a lot of good friends.
University life is incredible. One of the most surprising things about life as a college students is the ways Ive made friends in the past few months. Ive made so many good friends by going to the gym, studying at a table outside, eating at the Y, throwing the football around, and more. Throughout high school, Ive heard a decent amount about how easy it is to make friends in college since everyone is going through the same big transition in life and is being thrown into something completely new, but to actually live it, it was pleasantly surprising. The only unpleasant things about college life is the 2 washing machines in the basement of my dorm hall that are always full and the hot water in the showers that keeps on running out. Other than that, my college experience aside from being a student has been amazing.
My advice to future SGC students is to seize every opportunity you can. You never know what can happen. Its incredible how many friends Ive made, great memories Ive created, and things Ive learned simply by saying, why not. The worst thing that can happen is you waste a little bit of time, but you can get so much more out of it. You are given so much freedom by being a college student. Go to events, clubs, and even the muddy service day spent in the aquatic gardens. Looking back, Id know Id regret not going to that. That sentiment can be applied to so many of the things Ive done in college, so try new things and experience all the freedom you have now that youre an adult. Carpe diem!