As the end of the semester approaches, I have many realizations of how my classes have gone as opposed to how I expected them to go. Before I arrived in college, I expected all my classes to be in huge lecture halls with hundreds of kids and little to no interaction with professors. However, I only have one class that is like this and rather, most of my classes are similar to my high school classrooms as they are in smaller classes with around 30 students per class and professors are always open to communication. I also did not know about discussion classes so coming into college I did not have any expectations for them. I enjoy that even in smaller classes it is still possible to get individualized help from my TA’S. Alot of the delivery of information is similar to what I expected as most professors just lecture and do not pause much for students as there is too much information to be communicated in a short amount of time. One thing I did not realize about college was that even though some classes have a plethora of graded assignments, they are not worth much of my actual grade and thus it does not matter if I perform poorly on one assignment. However, exams are worth an extremely large portion of the final grade and thus it is hard to recover from a poor exam grade. I also thought that curves would be much more common in my classes but I don’t have any curves so far and my calculus class only curves by making our lowest exam out of less points. One other thing that surprised me was that there are certain classes where it does not matter whether or not you go to lecture. The material in lecture is either onlin eor it is easy to still get an A in the class without attending lectures. When I first started college I thought that every class would be extremely important but in reality, some classes are quite easy and do not require as much effort.
Alot of the topics we covered in SGC I did not expect. For example, we spent a few lectures on logical fallacies and I did not expect them to come up in a Science and Global Change class. There was also a large amount of history in this class and I did not come into this class thinking we would be concerned about history and evolution. When I joined this program I thought that we would be concerned about current scientific discoveries and how they impact the world as a whole and I did not expect that we would be learning about fossils and climate change. What we did not cover yet is that I do not think we have seen the global impact of current science and I thought that this is what the class would be mainly about. In regards to the out of classroom activities I like that they are there and they encourage bonding between new students to help make new friends. Even though service day was a real struggle, we were all struggling together and this created friendships and it was helpful as new students to the University and meeting new friends.
In my college life, it is extremely different compared to my life in high school. I have much more freedom compared to when I was living at home and I have control over my life. Alot of things that I thought colleg-life would be like in high school are true such as having more control over my free time and when I want to do things. One thing that is different is that during high school I thought that my sleep schedule would remain about the same when I came to college but now that I am here it has changed drastically. I am staying up much later at night and waking up later oftentimes barely in time for me to get to class. One other thing is that my high school version of myself saw me going to hang out with friends alot and that is the reality but around exam season it is much more stressful and I spend more time studying. In highschool I did not have to study as much but now that I am in college I find myself studying much more. I feel more stressed about my grades as they matter much more now and it can cause me to feel exhausted at times.
My final statement on my advice to future SGC students is to make friends with the people in your colloquium and those that live around you as this is your easiest way of making new friends. Take advantage of the scholars events and attend them if you can especially for SGC specifically because those will be your biggest help in making new friends in a new environment.