The college experience is definitely a lot different from the high school experience. One of my classes here that surprised me the most was by ENES100 class, which is basically an engineering design class. This class surprised me the most because most of the projects we did were actually quite complicated and for me, I have never had any experience with some of the material like using CAD and visual sensors whereas most of my classmates seemed to have already learned most of this in high school. I found this surpising because I thought that this would be more of an intro class but at times it was very difficult to understand what was going on. However, I was able to learn a lot from my peers around me and definitely from my teammates in group projects. They would sort of teach me how to do some of the tasks which was very helpful and I was able to learn more about the class.
I believe that I have made a mentoring relationship with my Spanish Professor this year in my Spanish 203 class. She even told me that I was one of her top students in all of her classes which made me feel good. I would say this is my greatest success in creating a professional relationship with one of my professors because it isn't always easy to talk to teachers out of the classroom. It is just something that we aren't used to doing. I would recommend for incoming students to talk to their teaches outside of their classes and develop relationships with them because they can help you with important matters such as writing letters of recommendation for a future job endeavor. Also, I believe that it will help a student's communication practices to speak with people that are older than them because in life, this will be a crucial aspect of anyone's job.
My frienships with my fellow students have truly helped me in many ways this first year of college. From just hanging out after rough exams to going to the sporting events, I am really greatful to have much such great friendships with people here at the University of Maryland. I have been able to better cope to the adjustment with my friends because we are all going through the same thing. We are all going to college for the first time and being away from our parents. I think this commonality is one of the things that makes my friend group so close. I would say the greatest obstacle in my friendship is that we are all different majors so trying to find a time throughout the day to hang out can be hard, but we make it work in the long run. I hope that next year's freshman are able to make great friends because when it comes down to it, these are the people that you are going to look forward to seeing each day and the people that will make you happy and a better person overall.
I believe that I was least prepared for the amount of time I would be studying, especially during finals week. For example, my major is mechanical engineering and this semester I have been studying way more than I ever would have expected. I knew going into it that my major would be hard but I didn't know it was going to be so time consuming. During finals week this semester, I plan to be studying at McKeldin almost every night for many hours. I know that if I do this consistently, I should be able to get a decent grade on my exams. For upcoming freshman, I would tell them to be prepared to work a lot, depending on their major. Different majors require different amounts of effort and I think that this is important for incoming freshman to know and learn about.