Kellie Boehlert's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay
When I first entered UMD, I expected the course load of my classes to be much more rigorous than in high school. In high school, my teachers just about prepped me for war, saying that college classes would be much less lenient with a much harder work load. However, this definitely has not been the case for me, at least in my first semester, and I found myself with much more free time and a much easier schedule. Homework in my classes hasn’t been as difficult, and while a lot of it doesn’t seem to be very accurate to what is on the midterms, I feel that it has been good practice to learn the course material. I had expected the homework to take hours upon hours, but it definitely is more helpful than harmful as I originally thought. Additionally, the exams have been less difficult than expected, and I have found that I’m doing much better in my classes than I ever thought that I would. However, the fact that UMD’s grading system has minus and pluses as different amounts of points on the GPA scale has been a struggle. Oftentimes in high school I would just scrape by with an A when I had an 89.5, which would be considered the same GPA as an 100% in the class. Additionally, my college courses have been much more exam heavy than I originally anticipated, where in high school I was used to getting points for classwork, homework, and there was less pressure for tests.
CPSG100: In terms of CPSG100, I was not expecting to learn so much about climate change as it occurs naturally, rather than just climate change caused by humans. In the past, all of my environmental classes have only focused on anthropogenic climate change, rather than how it occurs in nature. I thought that it was really interesting to learn about it, especially in terms of how they contributed to mass extinctions throughout the history of the world. Additionally, I really liked learning about the mass extinctions, especially the infamous “big bang”, as that is something that I don’t think I had ever learned about in depth. It was interesting to go more in depth of a topic that I originally had a very rudimentary understanding of. My roommate is in a different scholars program, and I always made sure to let her know what we were learning in class, especially when it was topics as interesting as that. I was also surprised we went so in-depth in learning about the scientific process, but I think that it was a very valuable thing to learn about. I was surprised that we didn’t learn more about anthropogenic climate change, but I’m sure we will discuss that in future classes.
In high school, I had imagined I would be spending most of my time studying with not much free time. Additionally, I was a little worried that I wouldn’t make many new friends, since most of my high school friends ended up coming to UMD (though none of them are in the scholars program). However, I ended up making new friends quite easily, and I hang out with both my old and new friends on a pretty regular basis, much more than I ever would have expected. However, I did expect to bond with the people on my floor more. Everyone I’ve ever talked to about college said that you would become best friends with everyone on your floor. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the people on my floor are much more “keep to yourself” kind of people, so I haven’t been able to make connections with many people on my floor. However, I did expect living with a roommate to be a much more difficult transition than it has been. My roommate and I met on instagram and didn’t know each other before living together, but it has been a breeze getting to know her and living with her. As an only child, I have never had the experience of living with another person, so I thought it would be difficult to lose much of my personal space, but my roommate and I have been able to coordinate very well to ensure both of us are comfortable in our space.
I would tell future SGC students not to worry about adapting to college, and that everything will work out in the end. I would definitely advise them to focus on academics in the first semester, as well as making friends and getting acquainted to college life. I had a few friends who got really invested in looking for jobs and internships, but I really don’t think that it is necessary for the first semester of freshman year. I would also advise them to take advantage of both the SGC and dorm events, as I think that they could be a good way to make friends. Personally, I wasn’t able to attend many, which is one of my regrets of this semester. Also, I would say, make sure to take care of your mind and body above all. Many weekends I ended up not feeling like going to the dining hall, so I ended up eating very little, which definitely was not healthy. Therefore, I would say make sure to stock up on snacks in your dorm which you can eat without trekking to the dining hall whenever you get hungry.
Last modified: 11 December 2023