Ryan Savvas Mohamed's "Freshman Time Capsule" Reflection Essay

Looking back organic chemistry was a course that came with a lot of surprises to me. When I first registered for the class all I’d heard were bad things about how it’s a weed out, a GPA killer, etc. Which definitely has some truth to it, but I feel like people never really talked about the stuff you learned in the class itself and only focused on how much of a pain it was to take. What really surprised me about the class was not how hard it was, but how many applications it has to the real world. So many things we see around us can be explained with organic chemistry. Medicine, biological functions, and drug synthesis are some of these things. When I was doing homework problems on synthesis it really hit me that with chemistry, there are so many things you can do.. You can chemically synthesize so many different organic molecules with organic synthesis, and I personally just found it amazing. The class is pretty annoying, but I find the subject awesome in a way. If an incoming student wants to experience a similar surprise to mine, I’d suggest they try to look past all the boring and tedious school work and try to see how what you’re learning actually applies to the real world.

Regarding faculty relationships, I’d say my greatest success in developing strong relationships with them came from going to their office hours and just talking to them or participating in class a lot. The biggest obstacle with developing relationships with faculty is probably the fact that not everyone has time to go to office hours or not everyone is willing to be the person that raises their hand a lot in class discussions. My biggest recommendation to incoming students to form a good relationship with faculty is to go to their office hours and just talk to them about the class or whatever they’re researching or doing work on. It is pretty hard at first, and can feel embarrassing sometimes, but it is a rewarding experience.

But I think the best part about university is how near you are to your friends. It’s easy to meet up with a friend somewhere on campus or just go to their dorm to hang out. I’ve had some rough times this first year in school, but being able to just walk a few minutes to see my friends has helped me a lot. But an obstacle that people may face when trying to form relationships with other students is that everyone is busy and has their own schedule now, which is pretty different from high school where people have very similar schedules in terms of classes. But some advice I’d give incoming freshmen when making new friends is to just be bold, try new things, and go out and talk to people. People in their first year are pretty willing to talk to new people since everyone’s out in a new environment. UMD is a big school with a lot of people and it's definitely not a super homogenous school where everyone has the same personality or lifestyle. There are so many different types of people, which makes it a lot less hard to find people that you really like to be around.

In terms of academics though, I was definitely the least prepared for the workload of university. I had really bad senioritis in high school so it was a huge adjustment for me to be disciplined with studying and turning things in on time. I recommend new students try their best to be disciplined with deadlines and to try and pace themselves with workload the best they can, since putting things off is probably the worst possible thing you can do in university.

Last modified: 9 May 2024