This assignment is to summarize your experience in SGC so far. It must hit all the points listed below, but feel free to express this in your own style. After all, it is YOUR experience you are writing about!
Your report must be an essay written as an HTML webpage, linked to your main page, of at least 800-1000 words length (longer if necessary; but please do not obsess over word count). Please respond to the prompts below. If you wish to add additional material, however, go ahead.
If you type this up in MS Word or other word processor first, be careful to use only straight (not curly) apostrophes and quotation marks.
Make certain to link this page to your portfolio (as an item under "SGC Gallery and On-Line Projects"). And please: make sure you apply your own css to the webpage.
The Topic: As you finish up your first semester at the University (and in SGC), it is a time to reflect on the difference between what you expected this to be like and how this experience actually played out. In what ways was life as a college student different than you expected? Specifically address:
Coming to the University of Maryland was a massive change for me. Living in California for most of my life, I was used to constant nice weather, but Maryland had something completely different in store for me. I walked out of the BWI airport and was hit with a wave of heat, and then weeks from then, the temperature dropped dramatically. After getting admitted into the scholar program, I decided to research it. I was intrigued but confused by this program. I had signed up for my courses online through the Letters and Sciences orientation, and I knew this semester would not be easy. Taking an advanced computer science math class was already striking my nerves. I expected college to be a constant hell hole of non-stop work. According to online forums such as Reddit, I also expected my professors to be complete jerks. My first day at UMD was a complete shock for me. All my professors had great personalities, and I immediately felt at ease. My classes were very cleanly structured. There wasn’t much work either. Coming to the Science and Global change colloquium, I had already made many friends through our first excursion at the national park to clean weeds. We had bonded over that experience because of the horrendously hot conditions we had to work in. Overall I am so glad I could go on an excursion like that, the first time I had to do such an amount of manual labor. It also made me feel good to help clean up the environment, and the lotus flowers were gorgeous. My class structures were very lovely, I had plenty of time before each class, and not one class gave too much work. Looking back at my first thoughts about science and global change, I assumed we would be discussing more of the science aspect, diving into chemistry, biology, and physics. I was so relieved when I found out that it was mainly based on theories. I enjoy learning stuff through theory because when professors explain theories it’s easier to understand when compared to the mechanics of sciences. I was expecting to learn a lot about climate change which did happen. I learned a lot about the more specific causes of climate change and how to prevent this. I had two classes relating to climate change, and my geology class also addressed climate change. Geology was more centered around the mechanics of climate change, while science and global change addressed history and theories. I expected to learn more about fossils because the cover page of science and global change talked about it a lot. The outside classroom activities were very different from what I expected. I expected the outdoor classroom activities to be data collection, and then we had to write a report and turn in the assignment. I was stunned when we had our museum scavenger hunt. I had a lot of fun with my group going around DC and taking pictures. The assignment itself was enjoyable but what I found the most interesting was DC itself. I had never been to DC and the buildings around there were so cool. I went to the white house and the capitol building. I also got to see the Washington monument. I went around the area and saw a lot of different food stands. I tried to try all of them. I enjoyed the Mexican food a lot. When I was high school, my expectations for college were also very different from my actual experiences. I thought college would be an everyone for themselves type of environment. But everybody was looking for friends on the first day so it was very easy to make friends. I especially connected with my scholar group a lot. My mentor was in stats class so we spent a lot of time preparing for stats tests together. Many of the people in my scholars group were also computer science majors so building connections with them was very useful later in the semester when I needed help to learn certain concepts. I also played a lot of basketball with my scholar mates. I expected my dorm in college to be a lot better however. I live in chestertown rather than centreville because my dorm mate is part of the ETE scholar program so we were placed in chestertown. The dorm itself was fine but the fact that there was no ac was brutal for the first few weeks at maryland due to the high temperatures. Advice I would give to scholars for next year would be to not stay locked in the dorm. Go outside for the first few days because everyone is looking to build connections. And trust me those connections go a long way. Another piece of advice I would give is to check planetterp when signing up for classes to pick the most optimal professor for your class. Also dont put ur classes back to back because after one or two lectures your mind gets saturated so its best to space it out. The pandemic did not affect me much because I was used to California's pandemic laws that were very strict compared to marylands because the covid cases in California are at a much higher quantity.
Also, please feel free to address how the semester worked in relation to your non-academic life: the difficulties, the benefits, the disappointments, and the unexpected highlights (if any!) of the situation you found yourself in this year.
[A FINAL NOTE: We do recognize the end of the semester is often a time when many high point value projects become due in all your courses, but we really hope that you will put serious thought and reflection into this essay. We (and hopefully you) can use this essay in future years to look back at your time in Scholars to reflect on how that experienced affected your future experiences at the University of Maryland.]