Coming into college, I was expecting my classes to be very stressful, time consuming, and difficult. However, this was not the case. Compared to high school, the amount of time I spent per week in classes this semester was far less. The most classes that I had in one day were four classes, which is still much less than high school. I was expecting to have spent lots of time doing schoolwork, however, this would not be true. Being that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time in classes as high school, I had much more time to do schoolwork. As a result, I was able to find a lot more free time than I was expecting. Almost all of my classes had homework every week, however, they usually weren’t very tedious. I would put them on a similar level as high school; thus, they didn’t take me as much time as I had thought. When I was thinking about how lectures would work, I imagined them as an hour of staring and writing down notes. Almost all of my lectures were not like this at all. Most of my professors in my lectures were quite engaging with us. My professors would interact with us and engage with us on a more personal level. For example, in my computer science class, being in a lecture of around 300 people, I didn’t expect to get to know my professor very well. However, my professor took time to get to know us, at least on the level of knowing our names. Coming into CPSG100, I was expecting to mostly learn about the planet and climate change. However, most things that I learned I would’ve never expected to learn in this class. The first main thing would be creating our own websites and learning how to write html code. Learning how to do those two things would’ve been my last guess of something that we would learn in CPSG100. However, learning html was very intriguing to me, as I enjoy programming, and learning about a new and very different language was interesting. I also didn’t expect to learn about constructing a good argument/hypothesis. We went over many things, such as logical fallacies and Carl Sagan’s tool kit, which are concepts that I would expect to learn in an English class, funny enough, I did. I never thought that these are so crucial to learn early on, as having a good understanding on how to create a proper argument is very important when dealing with things like climate change. Shockingly, in CPSG100, we haven’t explored as much about things like climate change and saving the planet. However, I now see that this course is structured in such a way that you develop fundamental skills that allow you to have an elevated learning experience when the time comes to learn about the planet. For our out of class excursions, I was very pleased with what they had to offer. The main one being our service day project. Coming into the class, I was expecting the out of class activities to be more hands off, however, the service day project was quite the opposite. Being able to sit in waiters all day, pulling invasive plants was actually very enjoyable. It was very pleasing to do something that is directly benefiting the planet. I think compared to my high school vision on what college life would be like, it is pretty similar. Coming into college, I wasn’t really expecting to be super social with everyone. I was expecting to have a smaller group of friends. Being in college now, these expectations were pretty accurate. I made some new friends, and I’ve found activities to do that allow me to be social. Compared to high school, it was a bit harder to make friends in my classes as they mainly consisted of lectures, where I was focused on writing down notes the whole time. However, I began lifeguarding at Eppley Recreation Center, and I was able to make up for those classes. Lifeguarding allowed me and other students to have a place where we could take our minds of school, and be able to socialize with each other. Giving advice to a future SGC student, I would tell them that you should trust the process. You shouldn’t come into UMD expecting to be friends with everyone, and having a seamless transition from home. The first few weeks may be hard, as you will have a lot of free time. Finding clubs to join, such as working at Eppley, joining any type of social club, or joining a clubs sports team is a great way to do something productive for yourself, and is a great way to make new friends. Also don’t worry about creating a schedule at the beginning of the year, expecting for it to be final. My schedule changed a good amount during the beginning of the year, but after some time, I found a schedule that worked for me. An important tip for doing school work, go somewhere like one of the libraries, a study lounge, or any of the many buildings on campus. Doing work somewhere other than your dorm room allows you to be much more productive, as you’ll stay way more focused, and you won’t have to be stuck doing work on a small desk in a small room. The final thing I’ll say is just have fun. You’ll have a lot more time to devote to other things besides school.