Khuong Nguyen's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

My first semester at the University has been very fun, eventful, but also filled with challenges, difficulties, and rough spots. Going into college, I thought that I would be able to easily cruise through it. I was able to cruise through high school with little difficulty while maintaining good grades, which hurt me in college. Throughout middle school and high school, I didn't have to study for tests, there weren't any large, time-consuming big projects, and I was able to procrastinate on all my homework and do it last minute with little to no repercussions. This eventually led to me being a terrible procrastinator with a bad work ethic, which was revealed this semester and really hurt me. The biggest lesson I've learned is that college is a lot harder than high school and I can no longer get by with my bad work ethic and horrible time management skills. I've realized that I need to become more disciplined, to not procrastinate, to start on my work early because the workload in college is 2x what it was in high school. Going to college and leaving home, I was excited to have freedom and independence but was not ready for the responsibility that comes with it. Not having someone looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm staying on track turned out to be difficult at times when the work piled up. Along with that, I had to take care of myself, making sure I eat enough, get my exercise in, keeping my hygiene and cleanliness in check, and making sure I allocate enough time to spend with family and friends. Going into college, I wanted the real college experience of living on campus, hanging out with friends, and partying. Being a very fun-seeking person, I would let the fun get to me at times and my academics and professional life would suffer. Before university, I worked consistent hours at the Combustion Lab here on campus and expected to continue working throughout the semester, but I ended up not having enough time and energy to do so. Being an electrical engineering major, most of my classes consisted of STEM classes. In high school, I dual-enrolled Precalculus at Howard Community College so I was sort of familiar with Canvas but since the class was online, I wasn't familiar with the in-person classroom setting for university courses. My Chemistry class, CHEM134 is a 1 credit class, hosting a once-a-week lecture at 8am. I knew college chemistry was a lot harder than high school chemistry, but it surprised me how difficult the class actually was. Being that the class was an 8 am, I skipped almost all the lectures and ended up learning from the slide shows posted on Canvas. In high school, I had near perfect attendance but once I found out I could skip classes in college, it got out of hand quickly. Mixed with a bad work ethic, a terrible sleeping schedule, and being a procrastinator, this was a recipe for disaster. My next class was COMM107, a public speaking and communications class. It was exactly what I thought it would be besides the pacing, the pacing of this class and how many speeches I'd be writing, and presenting was substantially faster than any of my English classes in high school. My next class was ENEE101, an introductory engineering lab. Looking up the class beforehand, I knew that this was an easy class with a lot of easy work. My biggest downfall is skipping a lot of the labs because I knew that I could do some of them at home. But this led to me having to do 3-hour long labs by myself that were challenging at times, and I would end up not even doing some of the labs, causing my grade to suffer tremendously. My next class was Calculus, MATH140. Having already taken Calculus in high school and doing well, I expected to cruise through this class. But I've learned that high school classes do not compare to university classes at all. I had to learn new concepts in this class and the problems and grading was a lot harder compared to high school. This class made me realize that STEM AP classes are way easier than actual STEM college classes. My biggest failure of a class is ENEE140, a C programming class. This class initially was easy for me because I had coding experience, but the pacing eventually became extremely fast. Knowing that attendance was not collected at lectures and discussions really hurt me because I eventually started skipping and falling behind. Also having hard labs due at 11:59 on Fridays was terrible, I would be so burned out by the end of the week and wanted to let loose and have fun on Fridays. At first, I would be able to complete the labs, but eventually the material got too difficult, and I skipped too many lectures and everything fell apart. My final class, CPSG100 was very fun. The New York trip was the highlight of this class for me and proved to be an educational but fun time. I expected us to cover global warming and climate change, but I didn't expect us to learn about logical fallacies, dinosaurs, conspiracy theories, and such. My only gripe with the class was our physically tough and demanding service day but looking back at it, it helped me make friends and get to know the people in our program. My biggest pieces of advice I would give SGC students going into college is to not let the fun, independence, and freedom of college life get to you. Do everything in moderation, have self-control, discipline, and work on your work ethic. Try not to skip classes too much and make sure to do your work before you worry about having fun, worry about your academics first before letting loose. Also, don't forget to take care of your personal health and relationships.

Last modified: 11 December 2022