The end of my first semester of college is not far off and looking back, there's been so much that I did not expect to find here at Maryland, both good and bad. Starting with academics, I always knew that college classes would not take up as much of a person’s day as High school. However, I didn't know the full extent of how much time and effort goes into these same classes outside of class hours. The resources that I have had at my disposal for these classes like office hours have been nice but the work still has had to be put in. Especially when it comes to feeling like every midterm is in the same week. Time management has been so important in college and while I knew it was going to be important for college, I definitely still underestimated its importance. I understand and I did expect the classes to have their emphasis on midterms and finals. What I didn’t seem to take into full account was that some of these classes go at the same pace with their own topics so having to take multiple midterms of the same day is a very real thing. This happened to me and it really took a lot out of me mentally, luckily it was a Friday which let me get a much needed brain break. My history class has been an outlier though, it’s exam schedule has been very nice for me so far. Also, the thing I was surprised about with some of my classes was the fact that there would be no homeworks and that the only grades are just midterms and finals. My History class has it structured this way and I was very much surprised by this, not in a bad way though. Overall the structure of the classes I do take currently has not been too far off from what I have expected it to be and it just goes to show that I just have to work hard to do well on all these midterms and finals. In terms of college park scholars, I expected it to be more about climate change to be honest. We have talked about climate change a little bit but we talked a lot about pseudoscience and logical fallacies and I just never expected those topics to ever show up or be mentioned here as much as they were. We did talk about rocks and geology recently which I did expect so Im assuming more about climate change is going to follow. In terms of the outside of classroom activities, they are pretty much what I imagined them to be and they are similar to the high school field trips I had, just with more freedom. The metro scavenger hunt activity was especially fun as we had all this freedom in a big city like Washington D.C. Moving on to living on campus and university life, It’s not been as great as I expected it to be prior to me being in college. While my Centreville dorm is not bad, it’s not the same as my room back home. I have also heard countless stories about bad roommates and lucky for me I have a decent roommate. In terms of thinking about university life more broadly, one of the things I did not expect was how annoying it is to go to the dining hall. The Yahentamitsi seems to always be crowded and the quality of the food is not bad but not great either. Also, while I have made many friends, I wish I could do more with them outside of just seeing them around campus. I have also found myself spending most of my time in the library throughout this semester just studying. I guess I expected more of a social life before I got to college but it hasn’t been nearly all that. However, UMD has a lot of clubs and activities to join and the UMD Club Running has helped me at times just get a break from UMD life and get my legs moving. I ran track in high school and so this club has really helped me detach from my work about once a week when I am able to go and just get a nice mental break. To all the upcoming SGC kids, my advice is going to be along the lines of time management when it comes to work-fun balance. In itself, time management is such a crucial skill to have in college. It’s important to also join clubs and get a social life, but then also manage studying. In terms of dorm life, my advice is please try to do your best on picking a good roommate or trying to get a single dorm. Having to deal with a bad roommate is an unnecessary headache that I have seen many people have to deal with here. Also another big piece of advice is to make the most out of office hours and TA’s and really go out there to find out about all the resources that are available to you. I personally have been working towards that and recently learned about study carrels at libraries and how to book them. It’s actions like these which make your university life more simple and better. My last piece of advice is to not skip classes, I don’t know why but it seems so glorified to go out and skip classes which is kind of weird to me. College is expensive and people are paying a lot of money just to skip classes and it’s not worth it. It’s important to go to class not just for the sake of learning but also to develop good study habits and life habits in general. Hopefully my first semester recap can make your first semester better than mine.