Overall, I think that my first semester as a college student has been a productive and successful one. I have made many new friends and learned a lot about the nature of my classes and what I need to do to succeed in them. I have become more acclimated with college life and how I need to split up my time to maintain a healthy balance in all aspects of my life.
In terms of just my classes, college has been somewhat different from what I expected. I expected there to be a lot fewer grades for all of my classes, but instead all of my classes have several filler grades. I definitely did not expect to have any weekly graded assignments, but that was the case for 3 of my classes. The structure of each of these classes is roughly what I would have expected, with most of the work needing to be done entirely on your own time. I did not anticipate that I would have so much trouble with Calculus 3 when it was online. I have never taken an online course of any kind, so I did not know what to expect this semester. I was able to succeed in all of my other classes when they were online, but Calculus was much more difficult for me for some reason. I did not expect that my one credit classes would require as much work as they did. CHEM136 and CHBE100 both had workloads that you would expect from a 3-credit course. CHEM136 even has a closed-note final coming up soon, and it is my only closed-note final.
One thing that I did not expect we would cover in this class was how climate change has affected the human population in the past. I had never known that there had been climate change in the past or that it had such a strong impact on the human population. There were definitely more out of classroom activities that were presented to us than I thought there would be. I went to the national zoo with my floor for our excursion, but there were a lot of other opportunities that were also presented to us. I was surprised by the number of opportunities that were available for people who were entirely online. I did not anticipate that it would be so easy for someone online to fill their excursion requirement. I also expected that the out of classroom activities would have more to do with climate change, but that was not the case.
I think that if it were not for the pandemic, college life would be pretty much what I thought it was going to be. There are opportunities for everyone in any area that you could imagine. If you love going to the gym, there is a community for you. If you love anime, there is a community for you. Even if you are shy and awkward like me, there is a community for you. There is opportunity for everyone to find people like them with similar interests. Lots of people go out on Friday and Saturday nights, and a few even go out on weekdays. There are people taking all kinds of classes, so it is east to find help if you need it.
If you are a new student in SGC, I would definitely recommend trying to connect with the other people in SGC. On our floor, we have people with all kinds of interests. We have people in all kinds of engineering and biology majors, so you can find help for any of your classes if you need it. The TAs and the professors leading the program are heavily involved in the well-being of their students, so you can always reach out to them. I would also recommend getting the excursion opportunity out of the way as soon as possible. If you are on campus, taking the Metro to the zoo is a great and easy way to fulfill this requirement.
As far as how my semester went, I think it went much better than I thought it would. I was able to talk to people much more than I thought I would be able to because of the pandemic, and I was able to go out with my friends to walk around campus almost every weekend this semester. I was able to get into the gym as often as I had wanted to the entire semester. I was pleasantly surprised when the gym was even open over Thanksgiving break. I think that the most difficult thing about the semester for me was trying to figure out calc 3. I struggled to stay up to date with the lectures, and I have not understood the content that well. I will still be able to get a passing grade in the class, but I wish I could have done better over the course of the semester.