The courses that came as a greatest surprise to me were my engineering courses. When I enrolled at the university, I was very unsure of what I was going to major in. Initially over the summer I was inclined to major in chemistry and go to med-school. However, I realized that maybe medicine isn't my true passion, and so I switched to engineering, a field which combines all my interests. However, I did not realize the level of difficulty of these courses. My brother is an engineering major, and I’ve never seen him do any work for his classes, yet he still has a 3.7 GPA. So I came in thinking that freshman year was going to be lightwork and that I would gradually ramp up. I was very wrong. The engineering classes I took made me work about 3 hours or more a day on work.
I soon realized that engineering was considered the hardest major out there. So I had many doubts, thinking “maybe this isn't the right major for me, I don't think I'll be able to keep up with this workload”. However, I stuck through with it, and I have had many successes, such as my truss project in which we won first place in strongest truss (with me as the group leader).
I realized that there are going to be much more challenges here in college than I ever would have expected. But you must keep going. Don’t let the intro classes intimidate you. Even though my classes were difficult, I found great interest in the material, and as I kept going, I realized that this is the perfect field for me. I need a challenge, and I know that engineering is practical enough such that I will acquire the knowledge to make the world a better place.
While the academics here are hard, I have to say, balancing a social life simultaneously is very challenging and at times overwhelming. I like to live my life on a schedule. At the beginning of each day make sure to plan out every hour of my day. I determine when I should eat, go to the gym, study, etc.. However, having a social life simultaneously is very difficult as gatherings are generally unpredictable and disrupt what you had planned (not to say I dislike having a social life. I think it's the second most important thing to have besides grades).
I am satisfied with where I am socially, and even sometimes, I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the different plans that different groups of friends are making. I have to make sure I pay attention to each friend group whilst studying and having time for myself.
This lifestyle that I have adopted as an extrovert has made me a bit uncomfortable sitting still and having peaceful time for myself. I used to be very introverted about 2 years ago. All my friends from high school like to point out how much I have changed since they have known me. But with this extroversion, I now need to learn how to set aside time for myself to breathe and not have to appease or worry about others. It's a much more stressful life when you get the ball rolling. You must have to make sure you have control of it all the way through.