Maxwell Frederick's "Freshman Time Capsule" Essay

No high school can match a research university`s academic breadth and scope. Not counting your Scholars colloquium, which course or courses came as the greatest revelation or surprise to you? How did you discover them and what strategies might incoming students pursue to experience similar surprises?

  • One of the most unexpected courses I ended up taking this year was HIST233 - Empire! The British Imperial Experience. This course was all about England (and eventually Britain) rose onto the world stage and eventually became the sole superpower before slowly fading away with decolonization. I found this course just by chance after looking for an elective, and it had definitely exceeded my expactations! At first, I was a bit apprehensive to take the course (high school history courses teaching the same US history to us for a decade left a poor taste in my mouth), but I for sure do not regret my choice of taking it. The professor in charge of the class was fantastic, engaging and helpful- especially when I needed a paper extension due to sideeffects of the COVID vaccine. Likewise, the actual content of the course was very memorable and interesting too, especially for someone who has only ever heard about the US in a historical setting. Unfortunately, my other courses were not nearly as memorable. I loved the content of my lab, ANSC103, but its infrequency and weird setting with COVID left a lot to be desired. My ENGL101 class as well, which was a course required by this program, had a wonderful professor but was otherwise just extra work. Overall, this semester was just a lot of work for me- one thing I can reccomend to incoming students is to keep your credits down if you can! 17 credits might be the cap, but it certainly is a drain to complete with any sort of flying colors.

    • The chance to develop mentoring relationships with faculty is a unique university opportunity. Describe your greatest success in developing strong relationships with faculty members and the greatest obstacles to achieving this. How do you recommend that incoming students pursue such relationships?

  • I have not been able to develop nearly as many realtionships with my professors as I would have liked to. As much of a pain it is to even try to with online learning, I could also pin the blame on myself quite a bit. COVID has been seriously wearing me down this year among other personal things, so trying to reach out to my professors outside of class has effectively been at the very bottom of my list of objectives for this year unfortunately. I can only pray for the incoming students (and myself!) that making those important connections will be easier this upcoming year!

    • Adjusting to the university is not easy. How have your relationships with fellow students enabled you to cope with the adjustment? What are the greatest obstacles in pursuing these relationships? How can next year`s freshmen make the best use of their connections with their peers?

  • I do not really have all that many relationships with my fellow students, truth be told. In high school, I had always relied on downtime during class or walks between classes or even just lunch time to try making friends with my peers- none of those exist with online learning in college. I have almost entirely relied on friends from my hometown for help coping, and most of them are having the same problems. I feel bad that I am not able tp give a lot of help to the incoming class, but online learning during a pandemic is just so different from in-person classes that I do not think that any experience I have had the past two semesters could really help.

    • For what aspects of university academic life were you, in retrospect, least prepared? How do you recommend that prospective students and incoming freshmen prepare to address these issues when their turn comes?

  • Online classes! They. Are. Terrible. I would not wish them on my worst enemies. Maybe that was a bit of hyperbole, but the struggle with them is real. For someone like myself that is already constantly struggling with motivation and anxiety, not having those in-person, interpersonal relationships and shoulders to lean on (figuratively and physically) eats away at your soul. Being so far away from home might be a blessing and curse for many incoming students, as it was for me as well. Freedom is great, but random bouts of homesickness are a killer. Like I said in the last paragraph, COVID and post-COVID classes are going to be so drastically different that my struggles are likely to be nothing like what the incoming students are going to face. One constant could be professors, however. It is inevitable that you are going to get terrible and/or terribly boring professors. Especially if you have a tight schedule like me- they are going to crop up pretty often if you have to alternatives time-wise. Try and do your best to use ratemyprofessor before signing up for classes, but if you still do not have a choice, the best thing I can offer for you is trudge through it. If you are a student like me and completely depend on a good professor mentally for a good grade, I wish you the best of luck in looking for good professors and reccomend that you try your best in the classes that you can!

    • Last modified: 11 May 2021