My life as a college student has been fun and also had its challenges. One thing that I expected that was way different than reality was my schedule. Unlike highschool, I had lots of time in between my classes. Also, in my situation, my roommate and I didn’t really interact too much which I definitely thought was going to be different. I also thought making new friends was gonna be super easy which in some respects it was, but definitely not as easy as I would’ve thought. One thing I thought I was going to fix was my procrastination but unfortunately I did not. I think I expected myself to be more productive with my free time but instead I wasted a lot of my freetime doing unimportant things. I also thought I was going to go to the gym a lot. In the beginning however I realized that it was making me really tired and that whenever I went I would spend too much time napping and not enough time doing homework and studying. One thing that was on par with my expectations was the walk to classes. I never realized how much walking was required until orientation but after that I was completely ready to spend a lot of time walking. Some nights I would spend 30 minutes walking to get from my dorm to a house.
CPSG100 was an enjoyable class and it was very different compared to what I expected and my other university courses. The structure is very different from what I expected because I was always told most classes require you to do a lot of learning outside of class, however in CPSG100 everything you need to know is taught during the Colloquium. The grading in CPSG was also different because a lot of assignments had their own weight instead of being put into weighted categories. This was different from my highschool classes and my other university classes. The delivery of the class is kind of what I expected because I expect college professors to be knowledgeable and interesting and that was definitely the case.
When I first enrolled in the CPSG100 I assumed that all we were going to talk about was global change however we also discussed things such as logical fallacies and other topics that are related to science but not exactly science themselves. I also wasn’t expecting the class to focus on prehistoric times and talk about dinosaurs and such, although I am glad we did. Some things we didn’t explore that I thought we were going to were maybe the political side of climate change. For example, parties who support/oppose it, current laws that help/worsen it, and future/proposed laws that will help it. I also was expecting that the course was going to cover Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay Area more specifically instead of the world as a whole when it comes to sources of climate change and impact. Well, our field trip to the aquatic garden was extremely cool and different from anything I’ve ever done in any other class. I thought it was going to be more observing and less manual labor but I think the labor made it more fun, except for the heat. The DC field trip went pretty much how I imagined it would, but that is a good thing. One thing I expected however was that there were gonna be large groups that formed however it turned out everyone stayed in their small groups. This was good though because I was able to become closer and more personable with my groupmates.
Lastly, some advice I would give to SGC students is to enjoy the field trips and such because they are cool memories that most other students at UMD don’t get to enjoy. Also, use the field trips to make friends because most of those people are going to be living in your hall on top of the fact that you will have your scholars class with them. I also recommend that you go out of your way to introduce yourself to people and don’t just immediately leave class once your lecture ends, everyone wants to make friends but if you don’t put yourself out there then it's going to be extra hard. A random thing I recommend is to bring a bike. Even if you don’t use it, I would much rather bike off campus than take a bus. My bike came in clutch when I needed my sim card repaired and to walk to the Verizon store would have taken an hour whereas biking took 20 minutes. The bus system is kind of confusing so in my opinion having a bike can be a lifesaver when you need it. Schedule classes around times that work for you, if you are not a morning person don’t schedule an 8 am class because either you are going to just skip a lot of the classes which will decrease your performance or you will go to the class and hate it and have less motivation to do well. Inversely, if you are a morning person, don’t wait till the last minute at 12:00 to do your homework because you are not going to get enough sleep. Lastly, DON’T PROCRASTINATE, you will find that once you are behind it is really hard to catch up.