University life has already been chock-full of challenges and countless wonderful new experiences, with many that I actually had expected. While there have already been ups and downs, it would be a lie to say that my experience has not been overwhelmingly positive. While 3 months is not exactly a long-time, it was long enough to fortify my decision to choose UMD, and I will continue to choose UMD for the next 3.5 years.
In terms of the classes that I have taken, almost all aspects were something that I was prepared to deal with. If anything, there was more support than I thought there would be. In high school the structure was clear and unchanging, every class was every day and completely guided by the teacher. Everyone more or less learned at the same pace. I had the opportunity to take community college classes during my senior year, so I had already had a taste of what college classes were like. Not every day (for most classes), a more self-guided teaching process, a newfound responsibility to reach out to professors and fewer yet more heavy assignments. When transitioning to UMD I expected this same exact structure, and for the most part I was met with it. Another facet that I had previous understanding of is canvas, I already knew how to use it and how grading worked on it. Despite all this I came into college thinking the support from professors would be worse than with teachers from high school or even the professors from the community college, but I was immediately proven wrong. There is a great deal of support available even more support in some regards. Whether through the clearly outlined office hours, the countless tutoring opportunities or even through the help of TAs which were a completely new concept to me. College classes while challenging, offer a certain sense of flexibility that I prefer to the K-12 classes.
CPSG100 was extremely informational, which I was not expecting. My expectation going into the course was that the topics would be almost exclusively on the concept of climate change, its history, present and future. It would be on its scientific background and its implications for humanity. However, not only was everything that I expected covered, there was an abundance more. We covered topics ranging from logical fallacies and the importance of skepticism within science, to basic geological concepts such as types of rock and how they're formed, all the way to creating an html file and uploading it to the actual internet. These are all important foundational topics, and this information went hand-in-hand with other science classes and will continue to do so throughout my entire future. The out-of-classroom activities such as service day and the AMNH trip were both quite fun and relevant. Service day felt very self-fulfilling and I honestly thought there’d be more required activities of environmental aid. I can’t speak for everyone, but I wouldn't mind that at all. The excursion I went on wasn’t as directly related to climate change as I expected it’d be. To me it felt like more of an appreciation builder for the environment and its history, giving us more reasons to have anger towards climate change. The class and our instructors related all scientific explanations to global change in way that made absolute sense.
Growing up as the second oldest child, my older brother had already gone to college and experienced freshman dorms. Due to this, I was already a bit familiar with how the first year goes. Although, with no offense to him, I am more extroverted than my brother and knew I would have a moderately different experience. My expectation was a sense of community, living next to people my age and with similar academic interests. I expected this sense of community to be extra strong within my floor. I expected to meet new people every day for the first few weeks. Some of these expectations were met, and some were not. I have met individuals that I foresee myself being friends with in the years to come, and many more terrifically interesting people virtually every day. The sense of community among my floor is not ideal, though I feel I've made up for it in other aspects. I’ve never been complaintive about sleeping situations, and I already shared a room with my younger brother so adapting to dorm life with a roommate was not even considered an issue. I knew when signing up for UMD that the walks to classes would not be short, and that is true but I don’t mind an excuse to get my steps in. Overall, freshman campus life is mostly what high school me expected and I'm excited for another semester.
There are a few pieces of general and SGC specific advice that I can think of now having firsthand experience. In general, as a college student the workload obviously reaches a peak. To mitigate the crushing feelings, I would recommend finding interest in what you’re learning so that it isn't a chore, rather an intellectual and informational challenge. It’s never a bad thing to have more knowledge under your belt. For newcoming SGC students, I would use that general advice to tell them that the scholar's program is an opportunity, not just a two-year long assignment, take advantage of it. For any new student, scholars or not, there are resources upon resources to help with essentially any academic or emotional problem you have.