I'm going, to be honest, college was almost exactly what I imagined it to be like. The only difference was that I thought the food was going to be way worse than it is. Before I came to college I'd seen many TikTok and other videos about how they're+ starving at school and only eat pizza so that's what I expected. Classes, I wished were structured better because most professors just read off the slides and don't actually engage with the course. This way of teaching makes it so hard for me as a student to learn the coursework because it wasn't rememberable. I also don't like the grading system in college with A- A and A+ because I'm used to high school grading.
In CPSG100 we covered Argumentation and Logical Fallacies Reasonable and Unreasonable Approaches to Thinking which I thought was really interesting as I didn't know there were specific types of arguments. I thought the outside-of-classroom activities would be better than what it actually was. The only outside-of-class activity I participated in was the dc scavenger hunt at the beginning of the fall semester. When I first heard about it after reading the syllabus I thought it was going to be very fun since I've lived near dc my whole life and visited multiple times. But the actual scavenger hunt was disappointing as it was raining really hard, which ruined the whole experience for me I wished they would have rescheduled.
Living on campus in a dorm was a big change from living at home. When I was living at home I had my own room and my own space. But living on campus you have to share a room with a roommate which sometimes can be uncomfortable but overall it is not that bad. Living on campus is sometimes better than living back at home only because there are a lot of things accessible around campus. For example, if I wanted to go to the gym and exercise all I have to do is walk 5 minutes to the school gym Epply but if I was at home it would be like a 20-minute drive. Also, we have unlimited dining, and when I'm at home there's barely any food.
University compared to my high school vision is about the same except I thought it was going to be more entertaining. I thought there were going to be more events that would take place and more parties that would happen. As a high school student, I expected college sporting events to be more exciting than it actually is. When I went to my first college football game it was super boring and most of the students left at halftime. But on the other hand, when I went to the basketball games I had way more fun as I actually understood how basketball works.
The advice I would give to future SGC students to ease them into college life is to not overthink it. Coming into college can be a very stressful time since it's a new experience. But the less you worry about it the easier it comes. When I first came to college I was stressed about not going to be able to make friends but the first day I moved in I made some new friends that I talk to every day. If you are worried about not being able to make friends, don't worry because this school is filled with thousands of people so you will certainly find someone with similar interests as yo
