May 8, 2023
You are now completing your first academic year and one way or another have learned much.
In some ways, your life here may have gone according to plan and in other ways, it will have been full of surprises.
Your assignment now is to create a “time capsule” in the form of an essay letting next year’s incoming students know what to expect.
Technical Requirements: (1) Format your essay as a web page, using the same web-development technologies, formats, and style as your primary Scholars Academic Portfolio page (2) Create a link to it from the main page’s “SGC Gallery and Online Projects” list (3) If you type this up in a word processor first, be careful to use only straight (not curly) apostrophes and quotation marks (4) Apply your own css to the webpage
The Topic: As always, we value most your spontaneous observations, but also request that you please address the following points. Typically, a thoughtful response would have between 500 and 1000 words, but don’t obsess over word count, and never pad!
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.]
(a.)
Of all the courses that I have taken, excluding the Scholars Colloquium, I would have to say my ENAE202 class came as the greatest revelation. This class is my Aerospace Computing class that I have to complete as part of my Aerospace B.S. degree. Coming into college, I had no concrete coding experience in the languages that we dealt with in ENAE202, C++ and MATLAB. When I had to tackle my first assignments and labs, I was pretty much doing a lot of studying on my own in order to gain an understanding of these languages at their core. In order to overcome my lack of experience, I spent a lot of time reading the extra notes the professor gave us and spent a lot of time coding assignments over and over until I understood the basic syntax and language. Still, despite all that I have learned, this class was definitely the hardest class I took in my freshman year.
(b.)
During my freshman year at college, after finishing my fall semester class of ENAE100, I started working with professor Christopher Cadou in order to complete a project based upon Pulsejets. In order to foster a relationship with the faculty, I spent a lot of time with my fellow project group members attending meetings with him in order to develop our final project product for Maryland Day. I felt that these meetings with the professor allowed us to further develop our relationship with him, and in turn allowed me to learn a lot. To the incoming students the advice I have to say is, make sure to focus on what you love doing and find someone who is an expert at that. This way, you will love what you are doing and you will gain so much experience.
(c.)
Having friends and peers along your side as you journey through freshman year is quite easily one of the most important alleviating factors you can have. The course load as a whole during Freshman year is quite heavy to say the least. Having time to relax properly and having peers who can help you out academically is something that helps you maintain good mental and physical health. Finding the right friend group is something I would say is very crucial to your experience as a freshman. Having good connections can also help to make your course a lot easier and help you to meet faculty who cater towards your strengths academically. The best way to utilize all that I have said above is by continuously meeting a consistent group of friends and further strengthening your bond with them. Remember this advice very strongly.
(d.)
I felt that the mentality we have in high school towards course work is much different than what we face in university life. I came in with a lax attitude and that came back to bite me in the end. I did not change my attitude enough to gear myself to have the most success that I could in my freshman year. This aspect of university life, the aspect of allocating the right time and effort into your courses and academic life, is something that I simply did not account for in the most proper way that I could have. I wish I could go back and tell my past self that you need to really up your game in terms of how seriously you tackle academics in college because it is not as easy as it was back in high school. So, to the incoming freshman I will say that focusing all the time you possibly can to developing an attitude and work ethic that matches the rigor of your academic course is what will help you succeed the most.