The structure of college classes was what was told to me, but not what I expected. All through high school, I was told that there wouldn’t be hand-holding in my english classes in college, and this was true to an extent. There was more than my high school teachers claimed, but significantly less than before. The math classes took this to the extreme. The teachers just did the lecture and called it a day. There wasn’t much support outside of class from the professor, only the TA - but only one of my two math classes had a TA. This was nice, as I didn’t have to go over some of the stuff that I already knew, but it made it very hard to catch up if I missed a class or two. The required grading items were easier than I expected. The homeworks that I had to do in high school for my harder math and physics classes were a couple of problems that took a long time. The work for these classes was easy and tedious. I had to seek out interesting physics classes in the beginning and middle of the semester, but this fell off as the classes picked up. My physics class was less interesting than I hoped, but more difficult than the AP class equivalent that I took. I also made less friends in my classes than I had hoped. I made three friends in physics, which is pretty bad for my major, and no friends in the large math lectures. I felt a bit lonely in my math classes - the questions that were asked were boring and I didn’t feel like I could relate to these depressed engineers asking about quiz topics, even in discussion.
I did not expect us to cover the philosophical basis of science. I do not think there was a need for such in-depth coverage of the topic. I believe in the methods of science, but frankly the success rate was enough to convince me. I liked the extra coursework that was provided. The HTML will be useful in the future, and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction was an incredibly worthwhile read. Our expeditions were fun as well. I made two good friends through the expedition to the Smithsonian Museums and Service Day was a fantastic time, even if I didn’t socially gain from it. I hoped that CPSG100 would be much more of the human scientific responses to climate change. I wanted to learn about technologies that are being developed to fight climate change; cars that pollute less, new concrete that requires lower temperatures to be manufactured, and other things like this. I am satisfied with the amount that I learned about climate change. I feel that I have a solid basis to build knowledge on. The last lecture of the class was the most interesting. It was not about technological responses to climate change, but rather political and societal responses to historical climate change. It was super interesting and I am really glad that it was covered!
College life is different than I expected. My roommate wasn’t around much, so we aren’t as close as we could be, but I am happy with the situation we have. To be honest, there are a lot of fun things to be done, but the trouble is finding the people to do it with. It is not often that your free day coincides with a group of friends. I was able to join frisbee, and this was a huge positive for me. I came into college expecting that the University of Maryland frisbee team would be pretty bad. I saw their results from last year, and I prepared myself to work really hard individually. But it was great! I love the people and the team is so talented that I think we have a good shot of making nationals this year.
I would suggest that future SGC students put more effort into their HTML website than is necessary. There is more benefit to typing out the code line-by-line than simply copying the template. I have learned significantly more since I started to do this. This is an apt analogy for college life. There are shortcuts and things that make it easier, but you are paying for an education. Without the learning, there is no point to the school - cheating on homework or cramming or procrastinating is a waste. I write this during finals, and I am learning this lesson a couple of times a night. This won’t ease future students into college, in fact, it will do the exact opposite. This is on purpose. As we learned in our colloquium, a million conservative, realistic steps towards knowledge work well. Put in low effort for a protracted period and college will be much easier.