[Over the course of my first semester at the University of Maryland, I have been presented with new experiences, both challenging, exciting, and every combination of the two. The greatest challenge, I believe, was the transition from being at home to living in a residence hall- though my roommate and I get along fine, the change in comfort from not having a truly private space is astounding. Discomfort has really, overall been a theme in my first semester here- the uneasy feeling of not having the people around I’m used to knowing, of living in the place I’m used to living. On one hand, it has been excellent at pushing me out of my comfort zone and getting me to try things I probably otherwise never would have, and has by necessity forced me to get better at things like time management and awareness of how much I need to study, skills that I semi-developed but was somewhat lacking throughout high school. I have a long way to go on these skills, but when all is said and done, I think I certainly could have done worse (we will see during finals). My classes were honestly pretty similar to what I would have expected from a college course, mostly large lectures given that I’m a freshman, at a significantly faster pace than a high school course, and with far more of an expectation to study out of class. However, I honestly didn’t find that the content itself was so much harder than what I’d done in, for example, AP classes. My schedule was shorter anyways and I had more free time, and considering that homework was basically the same as it was before college, I didn’t have too much trouble. My main problems came from inability to retain content up to midterms, and the occasions where midterm exams would overlap and require me to study for several at a time. However, by studying earlier before finals and setting out a plan and study material ahead of time, I have been able to - hopefully - increase my chances of getting a decent grade.
CPSG100 was an interesting course, I believe. Being fully honest, after four years of a Global Ecology high school program, I expected much of the same. The actual class content itself was, I think, much more original than I anticipated and delivered in a more engaging way. My expectation was for more of the same “climate change is bad, use clean energy, drive less” content that had been repeated over and over without a hint of nuance in my earlier classes, but I was pleasantly surprised especially by the ‘nature of science’ section of the course, which covered material that was both new to me and fairly easy to learn. Though I think the readings- especially the first two books- were occasionally somewhat repetitive, they did cover many fallacies and corresponding techniques to avoid them that I think are very useful for scientific thinking. Additionally, the focus on past climate change was very interesting- before, the only knowledge of Earth’s natural climatological fluctuations I really had before was the knowledge that it was unlike today’s current anthropogenic climate change. The most interesting section was regarding the effect of climate change on human societies through history. The ability of human societies to adapt to climate change is often not discussed when thinking about potential repercussions, in the sense of survivability. Usually, the focus is shifted towards the ability to become more sustainable, but the ability of a society to actually endure through such changes is less often discussed compared to the ability to prevent those changes in the first place. This provides me with some interesting questions to take with me into further SGC courses- namely, what can be done to ensure resilience in the face of climate change assuming that things will not change from today, and the use of fossil fuels continues? This question seems to be on the minds of some of the rich and powerful, buying rooms in remote luxury bunkers, but what can be done, by both the individual and state, to ensure the ability to thrive in a world with a rapidly changing climate?
Overall, however, I quite enjoyed this semester. Despite the discomfort, and the unfamiliarity, I think I did a serviceable job at adapting to my new environment and overcoming the challenges that come with my first semester of college. While there are surely many, many more to come, I hope that each will make me better and better equipped to handle the next. If I had one aim for the coming semesters, it would frankly be to make more friends. Many of the people I was friends with in high school were the same people I knew from middle school, and my progress in that area was even further hindered by COVID, so as is I really don’t know how to connect with new people in a way more lasting than a greeting. Regardless, this is just another challenge, and hopefully one I can soon overcome.