My first semester here at the University of Maryland was a time of growth, learning, challenge, and independence. I started the semester as an engineering undecided major and am finishing as an aerospace engineering major. I took five classes for seventeen credits this semester and became an active member of one engineering club. I have met new people and exposed myself to new experiences. My discipline, work ethic, and dedication has been tested, and I have done my best to rise to every occasion. Overall, I am happy with how my first semester went, and I am excited to continue to improve in as many ways as possible in my future semesters.
Throughout my educational career, academics have always been a strong suit of mine. I have always had very good study habits and a very strong work ethic when it comes to doing assignments, studying material, and learning as much as I can in my time taking a class. This made me confident going into the semester, as I knew that I could handle the workload of my classes, despite the major transition between high school and college. My confidence proved to be warranted, as I was able to succeed in regards to learning and grades. My high expectations of myself were in some ways met and in others exceeded. I am happy with how I have performed on exams and other graded assignments, but have been surprised with how well I have been able to do in group projects. I did not have a lot of exposure to long term group projects in high school, which is a major difference between high school and college, as team-based assignments were a staple of my first semester. The best example is with ENES100: Introduction to Engineering Design. The class revolves around a semester-long, interdisciplinary project where teams of eight students design, code, and build a fully functioning and autonomous over-surface vehicle (OSV). Despite having minimal experience with robotics, I was able to play a large role in the project, as did the rest of my teammates. Each student was able to utilize their strengths as we frequently collaborated and communicated as to how to best construct our OSV. Although I expected to have some more collaborative projects in college, I did not expect to have the entirety of a class be a single group project. I also did not expect it to go as well as it did. Our OSV scored very well in the final competition and it was a very enjoyable experience to build it.
As to the rest of my classes, I did not know exactly what to expect going into them. The lecture and discussion structure was new to me and something I was unsure of. In high school, I was a bit intimidated by the concept of a large lecture class where you do not have many opportunities to ask questions or connect with your professor. However, it did not end up being a problem, and the discussion classes were very helpful in that. Unfortunately, I did also fear that it would be more difficult to make friends in these large lecture classes, and I found that to be true. The vast majority of people I met were outside of classes. Luckily, I was able to become friendly with my engineering teammates and some of my classmates in my Introduction to Japanese Language class, as this class was only twenty or so students. With regards to work load as a whole, it met my expectations. I expected there to be more graded assignments and exams, but the act of studying and reviewing material kept the amount of time I put into work outside of class high. However, as I said before, this was not a problem for me, and I was able to do well in all of my classes.
The College Park Scholars and the Science and Global Change experience was a major factor in why I chose the University of Maryland. Being in a living-learning community where I would be able to be a part of a smaller group within a larger institution was very appealing to me. The SGC colloquium class was not something I knew anything about, but it ended up being a nice experience. Only meeting once a week was nice and I still feel like I learned a lot about the pressing issue of climate change, something that everyone should know about. I also did not expect to learn how to code html and create my own webpage, which was a nice surprise. I expected to learn more about the potential solutions to climate change, but I assume we will touch more on that in future semesters. Although the colloquium was enjoyable and I plan to continue with SGC, there were many aspects of Scholars as a whole that failed my expectations. The main reason Scholars drew me to the University of Maryland was that it would make it easier for me to find a community of people to befriend in an intimidatingly large school. I did not find this to be the case at all. Despite the many activities that we did together as a cohort, the interactions I had with people never led to friendships that stuck. I met nearly a dozen new people at Service Day, all of whom were people I thought I could be friends with. However, despite talking to many of them afterwards, it did not seem like they really had any interest in making new friends. I found that most of them were Maryland natives and already had a pre-established friend group from back home. As an out-of-state student, I never felt like I really belonged with the people I hung out with from service day, as I was just this new guy who their other friends had never met. Within the first few weeks, I hung out with three different friend groups, each of which had a different person I met through SGC, and in each one I felt like an outsider. I tried again at the Scavenger Hunt and the NMNH Excursion, but the people I met there really only cared about getting the assignment done as quickly as possible and leaving as soon as they could, making it impossible to connect with them as anything more than classmates. I don’t think I made a single friend entirely from scholars, and with regards to the friends I do have that happen to also be in scholars, the reason I befriended them had nothing to do with scholars. I hope that next semester will be better and a fresh start will be helpful.
Despite the difficulties of meeting people through scholars, I was able to meet people through the club I joined. I became a part of the engineering team UMD Loop, where we build a Mars Rover to compete in the University Rover Challenge, a national competition held in Utah. Loop has been the best contributor to my social life, as the people I met directly from this team and the people I met indirectly from it (i.e. friends of friends) are the people I am closest to on campus. So although I did not meet people through scholars, and surprisingly not really on my floor either, I do have friends and am content with where I am socially. I always hope to connect with more people and hope I can do so next semester. I would still easily say that my closest friends in general are my friends from back home, and I still talk to them everyday. I expected that to be the case as I have known these people my entire life, but I did expect to have more close friends here at college. Being independent has had its challenges but has also been one of my favorite parts of being here. I like that I have control over my life and I have not fallen behind on anything I need to do. Dorm life has met my expectations and I plan to stay living on campus in the next academic year, with hopes that staying in the living-learning community of Centreville will eventually lead to new connections. The dining hall food has exceeded my expectations and I have not really gotten tired of it. Overall, life as a college student has been what I expected it would be in regards to academics, independence, and dorm life.
My best advice to future SGC students would be to never be embarrassed to put yourself out there. I am typically introverted but still went out of my comfort zone on several occasions to try and meet new people. I even failed several times making friendships, as I said before. However, I kept trying and had a positive attitude about it, and I was eventually able to connect with people I enjoy hanging out with. There is no shame in trying and failing, so long as you never give up.