Laurel's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

As I finish my first semester at the University of Maryland, College Park, I have some ending thoughts to think on. So far, the experience has been overall exciting and also equally stressful for me. With all my newfound experiences and knowledge, I wanted to take the time to rewind and reflect on what a semester it's been so far.

To start off, I wanted to talk about what I personally expected when I first started attending classes on campus. Coming from California, I knew that the transition would be rough in some ways given that I was essentially starting anew in an unfamiliar place that I had no clue about. To prevent myself from being too overwhelmed during the semester, I researched a lot into the different activities and clubs that I wanted to participate in during my time here, which definitely made the transition into college much smoother. However, I do think I underestimated myself, since I ended up transitioning into college life a lot better than I initially expected. Before I started my time here, I was really worried that the large population of students would mean that I would have a hard time finding and carving out a niche for myself and would struggle to build a community of friends. I also thought that the classes would be so difficult that I would struggle to keep up and understand the material.

Fortunately, neither of these things didn't actually end up happening. Instead, the transition was a lot better than I could've hoped for, and the classes that I took were a right balance of challenging and familiar material. The structure of the classes were a little different from what I was used to, with a larger share of the grade based around exams, but otherwise, they were structured similarly to my classes in high school. Something that stood out to me at first was that some of my classes prohibited collaboration between students on projects, which I found odd, but otherwise everything seemed standard. The most striking difference was the extremely skewed gender ratio in my classes, however. In high school, there was always someone in my class that I could rely on and feel comfortable studying with. In college, however, I often found myself as one of the only girls in the room, sometimes being the only girl in the room especially as the semester dragged on and people stopped attending discussions and lectures.

Strangely enough, CPSG100 was a nice break from the tedium of my major required courses (which I didn't expect), since I got to learn things that were topics that I never would have thought about otherwise. I didn't expect CPSG100 to cover the different reseach papers and types publications, but it was interesting to me to see how people could publish scientific papers. Something that I expected to be covered are ways to prevent the Sixth Extinction, since usually along with problems that are brought up, a solution is also provided. I was also surprised that there wasn't a mention of how corporations play a big role in the current climate problems, but it makes sense the colloquium isn't as concerned with politics and foreign affairs. The outside-of-classroom activities were a lot more involved than I thought, like weeding a lake, travelling to DC to do a scavenger hunt, and going to NYC to see the American Museum of Natural HIstory, but they all were exciting to go to and interesting to learn about.

As a student living on campus, University life is just as I expected. There's always a lot of activities going on, so there's always something to do or see. At times, it could get a little overwhelming, since there are so many choices to pick from but you can only do some of them, but it encouraged me a lot to leave my dorm often and see what sorts of activities are taking place. Compared to high school, I feel a lot more engaged with the environment and the people here. It's a big school, but within each dorm, there's a smaller group of people that form a tight-knit group, which fosters a sense of community. Of course, there's always going to be that same loud and annoying person on the floor who always insists on blasting music in the middle of the night, but otherwise living on campus is good.

A piece of advice that I would give to incoming SGC students is that they should come to college doing all their research and the kinds of activities they want to get involved with ahead of time. The planning that I did during the summer before starting college was invaluable to me, since I immediately knew what sorts of clubs that I wanted to participate in and was ready to apply to them. In the especially competitive clubs, doing research ahead of time and even applying during the summer is what will distinguish you from others, and prevent the mid-semester regrets when you realize that you missed out on applying to a club that you wanted to participate in during the semester. It'll also help mitigate some of the stress when the First-Look Fair comes around and you're overwhelmed by the sheer amount of campus organizations. Most importantly though, it's important to put yourself out there and take risks that you may not be comfortable with. Only then will you learn your true capabilities and understand more about what you can and can't do. Who knows, you may even surprise yourself. On a final note, while college is a place for you to experiment as much as you want, be sure to take care of yourself and your mental health. Never let yourself get burnt out, since recovering from burnout is a long and arduous process.

Last modified: 25 November 2024