Giuliana Pangan's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

As my first semester of freshman year comes to a close, I feel that this semester taught me a lot in many ways. I think that as a freshman, you come into college with a lot of expectations on how life will be and how classes will go that don’t actually come true.

I think that for my usual classes, I was expecting them to still have a teaching curriculum similar to highschool because I took AP classes, but I was very wrong. In every class I have, teachers often expect you to teach yourself and provide you with the bare minimum for your understanding. It really is up to you on whether or not you want to study topics for a better understanding. I think that I expected college to come with freedom, but the academic freedom was a little hard to adjust to at first. The delivery of topics are definitely different too with more material being crammed in less class. However, I do think everything is manageable with a better mindset and better time management. I think that having the high school mindset that someone will help you through your notes and assignments is something that you should not expect coming into college. Although this was all different, the grade weights of assignments are more or less the same as when I was in high school. The + and - grades, however, are different from the grading scale in high school, and are definitely a lot more stressful than high school grades.

I think in CPSG 100, we mostly covered things that I expected we would cover. There were a lot of things on the climate and historical things that I figured we would cover. What I didn’t expect was that we would have some coding assignments and lectures involved in the course. I think that the outside-of-classroom activities, like our excursions, are definitely fun. I knew that they would be a part of the course and was part of the reason I signed up, so I was happy that they met my expectations.

As a university student that lives on campus in Centreville, I am enjoying college life. I think that living in a dorm is similar to just staying in your room all the time, but just has the annoying part of communal bathrooms. Aside from that, I think that living in a dorm is something that isn’t too hard to adjust to. It is pretty much what I imagined with the same amount of freedom. However, one thing I didn’t imagine was getting tired of the food on campus. With the semester coming to an end, I’ve learned that dining hall food will never be as great as it seemed the first few days of college. I think that choosing to live on campus was definitely a great choice as a freshman and allowed me to join as many clubs as I planned to and to also interact with as many people as I hoped to.

To future SGC students, I think the best advice is to focus on your classes, but to remember to also find fun things to do. Although school is important, I think the first semester is really about learning to adjust to life as a college student, which means learning to try everything to gain knowledge on how to balance what you’d like to pursue.

Last modified: 10 December 2023