Hello future freshman of SGC!
I am currently a freshman biochemistry major in the 2020-2021 school year which I am sure a lot of you remember as a year of pretty much all virtual learning. The pandemic has had a really big impact on my first year of college: I had all my classes but one lab of one class completely virtual, I lived at home, I never met Dr. Holtz or Dr. Merck in person, and I only went to four total buildings on campus. However, that stuff will gladly not be case for your first year of college (fingers crossed)! Even though our experiences will probably be very different, I am going to try to best relay some of my wisdom looking back at my own freshman year I think could apply to you!
During my freshman year, one of the biggest surprises when I started was that in any of my classes with a discussion section or lab section, it is completely run by a teaching assistant (TA). I honestly didn't know what exactly I was expecting, but I had siblings that had gone to smaller colleges then UMD and TAs were a rarity there. However, that is not the case at UMD, and that has its own associated benefits and challenges. The obvious challenges are that sometimes TAs and the professor aren't on the same page and TAs vary a lot. TAs also come with a lot of advantages! They usually are undergrads themselves or graduate students which means they are in school just like you, so they are generally really understanding, helpful, and approachable in a way that sometimes professors aren't. They are also usually the people you will directly interact with the most and get to know. I have gotten close with a lot of my lab TAs and undergraduate discussion leaders in classes where the professor didn't feel very approachable.
With virtual learning, I am sure a lot of you will understand how hard it was to get close with your teachers, and at UMD, it was the same and maybe even a little bit worse. Classes at UMD, especially the ones you take as a freshman, are sometimes gigantic, so during a normal year, it can be difficult to make yourself known among 200+ people, but for me, it felt almost impossible. However, for my smaller classes like UNIV100 (freshman seminar), CHEM177 (a majors only lab class), COMM107 (principals of oral communication), and CHEM237 (majors' organic chemistry 1), the connections to professors came a lot easier since making them mostly required going to class, asking questions, and participating. For bigger classes (100+ people), the best way to make connections with your professors is to do all the other stuff (like showing up to class and participating) and talk to them outside of class! You don't have to spend all your time in their office hours (you can if you want) but talk to them after class for a few minutes with questions about a topic or maybe something you thought was interesting that you want to know more about. At lot of your freshman year is making new friends, and these new friends can be a big help in adjusting to life at UMD. How I made friends will probably be different form how you will make friends, but making friends is all about being friendly and making the effort to talk and hang out with a person outside of the class you might have together. This year is going to be a big adjustment, so having other people that are going through a similar experience or have already been through it that you can talk to and have fun with will be beneficial. Another helpful part about having friends especially in your other classes is that you now have some study buddies which will be helpful too!
One of the parts I was not very prepared for university life was time management. The issue for me was that college is a different type of time management than high school was. For a lot of your classes your grade is based off a handful of assignments, projects, and exams, so while in high school you might have had homework, worksheets, and quizzes for every class, in university, every class is very different. Some will be similar to high school classes, but some will have 3-page papers due every week with a couple 10-page papers sprinkled in there or just a quiz every week with 4 exams over the semester. For classes that have assignments worth a lot of points that are pretty long periods of time apart, it's really important that you attempt to do some work for that every day because if you only give that class attention right before something is due, you are making it a lot harder on yourself. A lot of university is shifting your view from a lot of short-term assignments like you did in high school to long-term, bigger assignments which require more planning and thought.
I know that this year will be full of ups and downs regardless of how prepared you are, but I hope that you can avoid/recognize similar pitfalls during your time that I have mentioned here. I focused a lot here on classes because I didn't have a lot else that tied me to UMD during my virtual year, but freshman year isn't just about class! Remember to have fun!
