This semester, I’ve been taking a class called ENES 100 that has employed none of the basic structure or formula of a high school class. There is very little instruction, instead the class offers an opportunity for students to branch out on their own in an attempt to learn hands-on skills that they’ll need for their future classes and career. The entire class revolves around a single group project in which teams of seven or eight attempt to build an over terrain vehicle that can complete a task and navigate through obstacles to a specific point. If I had any advice for a student who has no experience with this style of learning, it would be to trust yourself. You can learn everything you need to know without the help of an instructor, but you have to put the work in and trust that you can do so.
It is definitely more difficult to build close relationships with professors in college than it was in high school; The majority of your classes take place in large lecture halls with hundreds of other students, so its difficult to gain individual attention from teachers, but there are still ways to gain a relationship with your instructors. The best way to do this is to attend office hours. Even if you’re not having a great deal of difficulty in the course itself, office hours are a valuable resource because they provide an atmosphere where you can ask a professor any questions about their subject that would go deeper into the course material. In doing this, you can both develop a stronger understanding of the core principles of the subject, which might be valuable in future semesters as the topic becomes more difficult and specific, and you can develop a personal relationship with an instructor, which might be equally valuable in the future.
I was lucky enough to know some of my fellow students before attending UMD, which helped ease the transition into college life; However, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t put extra effort forth to meet new people any chance I got. I think it’s incredibly important to cast a wide net early in your college career, to go to any event, club, sport, etc. that you can in an effort to meet people that you like and can call upon if you ever need their help. Sometimes other people are unwilling to reciprocate your friendliness, but you shouldn’t let that deter you from trying to build relationships in the future.
I think I was a little unprepared for the amount of freedom I’d have in college. I’ve always been pretty self-reliant, so I was never worried that I wouldn’t be able to live on my own, but I didn’t take into account the difficulty of not having constant guidance for difficult decisions. Our whole lives up until this point, we had teachers telling us what classes to take, counselors telling us what clubs to join, parents telling us what sports to play, but suddenly, that lifeline was gone. This is undoubtably a good thing. We need to learn how to make decisions for ourselves in order to function in the real world, and once you get past the initial shock, you come out of the other side as a more well-rounded person.