Outside of CPSG 100 my classes were pretty on par with my expectations. I had trouble adjusting to my calc 1 class because my professor can be pretty difficult to understand. I had already taken calc in high school but a lot of the information was completely new. This class definitely caused me much more stress than I expected. My gen chem 1 class was exactly what I expected of a college class. It was in person so I got a taste of going to class in a big lecture hall. It was a bit strange since it was such a big lecture hall but with only about 25 of us in there. The discussion for my gen chem 1 class was in person and almost got lost on my first time walking there, I blame this on google maps taking me to the wrong entrance, but luckily I found my way. I also had my gen chem 1 lab in person which was a fun experience, albeit a little stressful. On thursdays, I had my UNIV100 class in person, which was a nice chance to talk to people. Being stuck at home was rough, but I had the opportunity to talk to some other freshman and the class ended up being really fun. We also went over Myers-Briggs personality types and took a few quizzes to find out our own personality types which was really interesting and useful.
One thing in CPSG 100 that I didn't expect to cover was flaws in thinking and logical fallacies, but it made sense why after we did it. I expected to talk about some misconceptions with climate change and flaws in some common rebuttals. We discussed some different climate periods in the past, but I would have thought we would talk about more modern climate change. It makes sense why we did the past first, but I would have expected to get to more modern climate change this semester. One thing I was looking forward to this semester was getting together as a group and meeting other people in the scholars program, but obviously that was not possible with the current situation. It was nice getting together with my peer mentor group to play some games together, but unfortunately only 2 other students in my group showed up.
I did not have many expectations for campus life this semester. I originally planned on living on campus and had a room assigned on the 4th floor of Centerville hall, but I cancelled on the last day possible because of the delay of in person classes. It wasn't all that strange commuting to campus because the drive was actually shorter than my drive to high school. I do plan on living on campus next semester even though everything is likely to be online and stay that way. I did join two clubs, although ended not going to one very much because I did not enjoy it very much. I didn't really get the chance to make many friends this semester, but I am hopeful that I might meet some people next semester. If things had been more normal, I think I would have played some intramural sports to get some exercise and meet some people. Although I'm not really a competitive person, I really enjoy being able to get out and play sports. I think my favorite sport to play is basketball, but I am pretty bad at it. Of course there are a lot of things that I can say I would do, but in reality I doubt I would build up the confidence to actually do a lot of these things.
Some advice I would give to future SGC students is to make friends with some people you have classes with. I wish that I knew people in my classes because it would have been nice to ask questions and sometimes just to complain to someone who is going through the same thing. Another piece of advice I would give is to try and get Ms. Allen for ENGL101S. I have never liked my english classes, but this class was actually kind of fun due to the fact that we were given the liberty to choose any topic we wanted, and given the choice to do a website for our final project. Overall, she is a really great teacher and the best way to get a required class out of the way. One thing I didn't do for this semester was look at professors before choosing my classes. In some cases I didn't have much of a choice, but I definitely would have chosen a different calc teacher if I had known any better (stay away from Yordanka Kovacheva). I have heeded my own advice and took the time to choose the best professors as possible for next semester. Planet terp and rate my professor are good sites to check out the professors.