Prior to going to college, I heard many times that college was going to be hard, and was very different compared to high school. Even so, I did not expect that it was going to be of this level. In high school, I was a straight A student and did not have to put much effort into my classes due to lenient policies following the COVID-19 quarantine year. This semester has been the “guinea pig” semester as I realized that I don't really know how to properly study and my time management skills were very poor. I may not start my college career with the GPA that I wanted to achieve but I believe that even if the classes get harder, I will be more prepared to face these challenges.
For one, the teaching in college is pretty different compared to high school. I did not know that classes were split between lectures and discussions. While my high school had 45 minute classes where teachers would teach a topic and then give a worksheet in the same class, classes in college were structured differently. For many classes, there is a lecture where the professor teaches the content of the class, often in a lecture hall with up to hundreds of students. In my CHEM 135 class, my professor taught a room of almost 300 students. This environment is very different from a classroom of about 20-30 people. Because of this, many professors do not really know their students, only the ones that make an effort to consistently meet with them.
I also heard that exams make up the majority of your grade and in this aspect of college, I was somewhat right. However I did not realize that in some classes, it wasn’t just the majority but practically 80% of your grade. For example, in my mechanics class totaling up all the midterms and final, was 80% of my grade, while the vast majority of the work, homework, discussions, etc was only 10%.
When focusing specifically on the Science and Global Change class, I did not expect to learn about the different types of scientific thinking and learn what all these terms mean such as parsimony, falsifiability, etc. From the name, I just expected to mainly learn about climate change and things that are involved in the environment and the world. I also did not expect to learn more about academic dishonesty and what counts and may not count as academic dishonesty, along with the various punishments that can follow suit. Something that we did not explore that I was expecting is to go further in-depth on the consequences of climate change. While we did talk about them, since I was expecting to learn extensively about climate change, I thought we would simply talk more about the various consequences more in-depth rather than a somewhat surface level understanding. This, and expecting to learn more about potential solutions to climate change. The “outside-of-classroom” activity that I was expecting was the service day to clean the ponds and pull weeds (partially because I was told beforehand by a friend and from orientation). I was expecting us to do things in this area of helping the environment. What I did not expect was that we would have the opportunity to go on so many field trips, one of them being able to go to NY (which was the excursion trip I partook in). I also did not expect to have to code a website through html.
In high school, I kind of romanticized university life. In some aspects I was right, in others I was wrong. In college, we do have a lot of freedom and this is something that I was right in. No one is forcing you to do anything. What classes, major, and studies you pursue is up to your own decisions and discretion. What I did not expect was how hard it would be to balance school and social life. In high school, I had so much free-time and while I knew college would take a good amount of that free time away, I didn’t think it would feel this taxing. Time management is essential to university life and I learned this the hard way.
For future SGC students, I would advise them to try to maintain a good work ethic as this will go a long way if you’re able to attain it. Avoid doing assignments last minute as it’s very dangerous to get into a cycle of having to do everything last minute and play catch-up the entire semester (which may or may not be something I learned this semester). I would also want to let them know that it’s okay to fail and feel overwhelmed. Everything is a learning experience and at the end of the day, getting a bad grade or even having to retake a class will not matter in the long run. What’s important is to persist and keep moving forward. At the same time, while it will be hard, it is also important to take care of one’s mental health and make sure there is time to have fun and relax. Otherwise, it will be really easy to get burnt out. My last piece of advice may be paradoxical, but it’s to take everyone's advice with a grain of salt. Everyone’s experience may be similar but also very different. This will be a period of time to experiment and learn what’s the best way for yourself to succeed.