One course that came as a great surprise to me was ENES100. This class was very fun and a cool experience. I met a lot of new people that later became my friends and was able to work on skills that I may need later in my career. During this semester in this class, we designed, built, and coded an OSV. This class was required for my major but when I went to the first class I was a little nervous because I was going to be working with people that I'd never met before but, once we started working on the OSV I had a lot of fun. This is a good reminder to never judge a book by its cover if you think that you won't like something don’t make that judgment till you try it because I'm kind of an introvert and I thought that I wouldn’t like this course, but this was honestly the most fun I've ever had during a class.
The best relationship that I made with a faculty member this year was with my TA for ENES100 because I had to spend a lot of time outside of the classroom to get our OSV to work. And I've spent so much time with that TA that we know each other on a first-name basis and are pretty close. The biggest thing about creating a relationship with a faculty member is asking questions because when you ask questions, they put a name to your face and start engaging in conversations with you. Then once you get close with them you can start asking them for things like a letter of recommendation.
In the beginning, it was hard to adjust to university life but once you make a few friends it gets a lot easier. The first week I only knew 3 people and they were my friends from high school, but we weren’t in the same major, so our schedules didn’t line up which forced me to go out of my way to make new friends. That was the best thing that could have happened for me because it forced me out of my comfort zone and made me start interacting with things around campus that I usually wouldn’t interact with. It helped me expand my comfort zone and become comfortable on campus. People here want to talk so don’t be scared to open up and start a conversation with someone you don’t know because they are in the same boat as you and want to make friends as well. If you can't make new friends here then there is a problem with you because everyone here wants to make new friends.
The aspect of university life that I was least prepared for was the amount of studying that I had to do to prepare for my exams. This was very tough to adjust to because in high school I took a half day my senior year and didn’t do too much. But once I got here I had to make some changes fast because I failed my first exam because I thought I would just fly through my freshman year. But that wasn’t the case and I knew I had to make some changes fast because I couldn’t afford to fail any more exams. So I decided to put studying first and make sure I study at least an hour or two every night so that I am prepared for all my exams and finals. But I would say just make sure you don’t underestimate the amount of work that you are going to have to do because if you do then you will have a major wake up call after your first exam.