The classes excluding the College Park Science and Global Change Colloquium number one class (CPSG 100) was about what I expected of those classes. My classes overall were big setups for a harsh and miserable semester, especially the excessive difficult classes that pertain to my major. The structure is actually pretty simple which is just going to class and taking notes. The classes are considered laid back but it also means that there is less overall care and attention to you. Grades are mostly graded on accuracy and many other assignments can be worth insane amounts of points whether or not they are exams. Either that or exams can make up to fifty or more percent of your grade. This was for the most part different from high school teachers (one of my teachers made exams eighty percent of the grade). Classes are more difficult than high school despite me being in a magnet program that is based in STEM and is meant to be at least somewhat like college in terms of difficulty.
The grading for the College Park Science and Global Change Colloquium number one class (CPSG100). The class was very open in the fact that it was literally just listening to the professors speaking while I expected the class to be somewhat strict despite the fact that I am aware of the fact that college/university is supposed to be of a lesser grip compared to the public education system in the United States of America. I was under the impression that this colloquium class was going to have assignments that were a lot of work and would compare somewhat to some of my more difficult classes. What I got instead was a laid back class that in terms of grading that kept my levels of stress astronomically lower than what they could have been had the assignments been graded harshly.
Campus life is about what I expected. I already knew many people that lived on campus, and what their description of campus is quite accurate to what it actually turned out to be. What I did not expect was the sheer inequality of the quality and the distance of dorms. Centreville is an average dorm but its location is also very good distance to my classes. I can be borderline late for classes and still make it on time because of a combination of living at a good spot and knowing shortcuts around classes in general. Pyon Chen is an example of the inequality that plagues the campus. People in those dorms live a life of luxury compared to other dorms. Pyon Chen and Johnson Whittle have good maintenance (elevators get fixed very fast) and every floor has multiple washers and dryers. This is completely different from Centreville where it took over two and a half months to fix an elevators and there are as many washers and dryers for all 8 floors of one side of Centreville as it is for one SINGLE floor for Johnson Whittle. Pyon Chen has even more than that too. Centreville also has a flawed system where the small side white doors are not accessible to students so if the elevators on North Side both break (it has happened during the semester) there is no way for people to even access the laundry on their side. South Side has access to their laundry from the outside by swiping multiple times and through a classroom to even get there without an elevator. This may be a somewhat bias view until people realize that there are much worse dorms on campus. Wicomico has no air condition and no elevators. Those people have a rat problem and have dorms that could be seen as slums from other people in the developed world.
SGC students that are coming into the college need to know a few things. One is that some classes that can be seen as a joke and maybe they are but do not underestimate your classes. Many are monstrous and the difficulty and workload of some of these classes can be the equivalent of a human rights violations. Do not procrastinate work as it will catch up to you. Make sure if you don’t understand something that you go to get help. Office hours basically always helps. Not seeking help is the equivalent of procrastinating but with more effort. If you want to suffer alone you might as well procrastinate at that point. One final note that I can give is that you should sleep as much as you can. There will be times when there is no time to sleep so getting as much sleep as possible is the most optimal thing. Do not go on your phone and look at social media or play games or anything of that sort. Because unless you one of those geniuses in college you will fail.