It has been a long year, or perhaps, a very quick year? The freshman year of my college time at UMD is just about to end. There are so many things happened, but perhaps I should introduce myself first. My name is Yilin Lu, graduated Winston Churchill High School, and is a freshman of year 2022 at the AGNR department of UMD. My major is ENST, natural resource management. There are a ton of stuff that I want to talk about, or even just to remind myself. Where should I start? I guess I will start up on how college is different from my high school, how are the classes different from the old times, how the activities are different from high school, and how I adjusted to the new life in the completely different envrionment. As a freshman student, the first thing got me confused was the schedule of classes. I'm required to choose all my own classes based on my major, general education credits, and most importantly, the time of each classes. It requires myself to choose the schedule of each class, which I had a lot of trouble with classes occuring during the same time. With some hourly work, I got through the first semester by scheduling my classes well, and the second semester was a lot better. Next, it is the learning experience and classes in the school. As a research university, a lot of the courses I took requires me to research information about them online in my free time, but with the large amount of resources UMD provided online and in person, it is actually quite fun to research different topics and gain knowledge on them. Other classes also requires many work during my spare time, but I got through the first semester fine. The second semester resulted in some problem as the BSCI160 has consumed most of my time but still have a bad grade. This course is my core course for my major, so I have to take it, but the grade is a huge problem. I wasted most of my time on this course along with its huge amount of work, but has not succeeded a little. I decided to drop it for my GPA and take it in the summer, hoping it will be easier. But if it's still too hard, I might need to change my major to avoid it at all. Overall though, the work in the school requires a lot more independent work and research which I love a lot. Researching those topics would let me gain more knowledge as I'm reading through them, and actually also having fun. Lastly, social problems. Personally, I actually do not like social one bit. UMD has offered a lot of clubs, daily activities, and even more chances to socialized and make friends in the CPSG program. I appreciate those options a lot, but I still choose to be alone. I got my comfortable single dorm, where I'm free in this place. I enjoyed being alone, but for whoever loves to socialize, there is tons and tons of chances to meet new people, join clubs or just hang out in events. A great suggestion that I want to say is to build a good relationships with the facaulties or professors, it is not even that hard! I have built a great relationship with many of my professors by simply talking to them. There are lots of chances you could connect with your facaulties, by answering or asking questions in class, talking to them before or after class, and most efficiently, go to the office hours of the facaulties. All the professors I have met are extremely friendly and well talking, whether you need help for learning the course or even just chat, they would often be free during their office hours or you could schedule a time with them. This is the part I found most surprising in college, as how easy it is to connect with the facaulty members and build a great relationshipm, as it is what I recommand the most. Overall though, I think I'm adjusting quite well in UMD. I loved it here, the only problem I'd say was that there is absolutely no day off in this school. Man, this sucks. Other then that, I'm doing fine in rest of my courses, learning a lot of materials while doing researches on my own. What I also absolutely loved was the community here, how friendly everyone is. Not to mention the wonderful environemnt as well. As I got more and more use to my class schedules, my daily routines also get better. Living here, studying here, and even making some friends when I have not intended to do so. The first year here at UMD was a fabulous experience for me, as I walked into a completely different life and loved it. I hope for whoever reads this would also adjust well, and enjoy yourself at UMD and learn in the meantime!