This year has defied our expectations in so many ways, but I'd like to explain how college defied mine. College was generally harder than highschool, but I felt mostly prepared for the difficulty. The structure of my classes were quite similar to how they were in highschool. In most of my classes, we had regular assignments due every week, and at certain checkpoints (usually when we finished a few units) we had an exam testing us on our knowledge of these units. However, I've never had to write a page that was 8-10 pages long before, so that was new. It was pretty daunting, but luckily it built upon stuff we had been researching for multiple assignments before that, so it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be to write that whole thing. Before the semester started, I expected to have way too many assignments in college level English, but it turned out to be pretty manageable, not to mention I learned a lot of great techniques for revising my work. As for my science courses, I had a lot of trouble with finding where things were at first. A lesson I learned the hard way is that you really have to pay attention to the syllabus: where in highschool you could read it through once and teachers would remind you of the expectations throughout class, that was not a luxury we had in the online environment where we had to figure a lot out ourselves. I relied on the ELMS calendar to keep track of my assignments, what I did not know for one of my classes is that some teachers opt to use completely different homework websites.
This semester, CPSG100 was one of my favorite courses for the guidance it gave me throughout the year. In CPSG100, we went over things that are applicable to all facets of college life instead of just focusing on Science and Global Change which I appreciated, it was like an introduction to the college in some ways. I did not expect that we would cover historical climate change in the class, especially the stuff about how early human societies coped with small amounts of non-anthropogenic climate change (compared to the amount of climate change expected in the 21st century). Also, I knew that we wouldn't explore how to combat climate change until sophomore year because it was said multiple times at the beginning of this semester, but before this semester I was expecting to hear a little bit about it. I'm excited to learn about these techniques in the future. As for field trips, when I was first choosing the specific scholars program I wanted to be in, a strong draw of SGC was the field trips mentioned: I am someone who really enjoys the outdoors and science. Obviously, with the pandemic these field trips were sadly not possible. I did get to sit in on a presentation of NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission though, which was a fascinating thing to listen to. It is a shame that we didn't get to do the scholars service day or any of the other field trips, but I think we did the best we could with virtual learning in effect. Speaking of virtual learning, I'd like to talk about what not living on campus was like.
I lived at home with my parents my first year. I don't think this semester has been at all comparable to my normal highschool life, but if we are talking post-pandemic highschool life it's somewhat similar. Virtual learning has its pros, we have a lot more ability to sleep in. There are much less synchronous classes in college than highschool, which is something I didn't expect. It's definitely a lot harder to keep on top of what you need to do when class is asynchronous. It's also been strange making friends this year. I am lucky in the fact that I know a few people at UMD who went to my highschool, and am still in touch with friends who go to different colleges now, but there's little space for organic conversation to happen with my classmates since everything is online. The closest thing we had was breakout rooms, where we could chat with our classmates about whatever when we had finished the task we needed to do. I am sure that when in-person instruction resumes, making friends will become much easier.
To any future SGC students coming in during the pandemic (hopefully this doesn't extend to next year but who knows!) I don't feel qualified to give you advice for college life, as I haven't actually lived in a dorm yet! However, for the academic side of college, I would say to get rid of your procrastinating habits now or college will do that for you the hard way. Time management is huge in college, do not leave stuff to the day before it is due because you have no idea how long a thing will take you to do until you start it. Even in science classes there are a lot of reading assignments, and questions based on said reading assignments due at the end of the week: start the reading assignments early so you feel like you are absorbing the knowledge at a good pace instead of spending the whole day doing it the last day it is due. In addition, GSS (Guided Study Sessions) are led by older students for most 100 (freshman) level classes, take advantage of this resource and don't be afraid to ask questions about the material to TA's during their office hours. They are really helpful. Overall, I hope that you can learn from my mistakes and have a great experience your first year of college!