The Topic: As you finish up your first semester at the University (and in SGC), it is a time to reflect on the difference between what you expected this to be like and how this experience actually played out. In what ways was life as a college student different than you expected? Specifically address:
Essay: In general, I would say that college is very similar to how I imagined it to be. It is very similar to my high school experience except I have more freedom with my schedule and time. The nature of college courses and the academic side of college is actually easier than the high school academic experience at the moment. The classes are at around the same pace as high school classes. The grading policies are based heavily on test performance and project quality, which is what I expected. The structure of college courses is very similar to the structure of high school classes with the exception of the vast number of students in most classes. Getting to know my professors has proven to be more difficult than getting to know my professors in high school due to the number of students that each professor is teaching. One aspect of the structure of the classes in college that is different from what I expected is how much free time I would have. I have so much more time to do work and hobbies in college than I did in high school.
In CPSG100 I was not expecting the class to cover geology and how it can help measure certain aspects of the atmosphere and climate in the ancient past. I found the lecture on different climate dating methods to be very interesting. I especially found using ice cores in Antarctica to measure and record past climates to be intriguing. I expected this course to go over potential and reasonable solutions to climate change and talk about the drawbacks of these solutions. The course went over the devastating effects of climate change and what would happen as the average global temperature continues to rise, but never went over specific solutions to climate change. The outside-of-classroom activities are more unstructured, in a good sense than what I expected. Many of the activities were unstructured in the sense that we were given a main goal and that we were responsible for achieving the goal by our own means. For the metro scavenger hunt, we were given the goal of finding specific landmarks in DC, but we were left to our own devices to navigate and locate the landmarks. I am very glad that the outside-of-classroom activities are structured this way because I think it provides a greater sense of accomplishment when the activity is completed.
University life is actually significantly easier than high school life and how I viewed University life as a high school student. I took many difficult courses in high school and I believed that college meant even harder classes and even larger academic obstacles and challenges. Now that I am essentially done with my first semester I know that I could not have been more wrong. I would say that the courses I am taking now are easier, but I am also learning a lot more and getting more out of the courses. I believe that this is due to the fact that I get to choose many of the courses that I take, so I can take courses that I actually find interesting. In high school, I felt as though half of the classes I took were not to my benefit and that I would never need to remember the content I learned in them. University life is more freeing and I feel I can find a group of people for anything. In high school, I felt as though I had to follow what everyone else was doing to a certain extent. From a social standpoint, college is an entirely different world compared to high school. In high school, I felt as though I needed to fit into some sort of friend group or club. At college, I believe joining a club or conforming to a friend group is more a want rather than a need.
I would advise all the incoming SGC scholars to relax more in college and take it easy. They most likely worked really hard in high school in order to get into College Park Scholars and they should not try to get through college as fast as possible. I would tell them college is more about learning and having fun than getting good grades and making yourself miserable. I was given this advice myself and I am very grateful that I received it. At the end of the day when your college career is coming to an end you are not going to remember how well you did on your exams, you are going to remember the relationships you built and the experiences you shared. Doing well in your classes is important, but if you were smart enough to get accepted into College Park Scholars you are probably smart enough to pass your courses and still have a great college experience at the University of Maryland.