Freshman year of College has truly been an interesting journey. In the fall I was not on campus and did not meet that many people due to covid. However, in the spring semester I ended up going on campus and creating so many memories and great relationships. My course load for this semester was quite challenging compared to my relatively easy fall semester. CMSC216 is a Systems computer science class and this class has come at great challenge to me. The projects and content in the class is not too difficult however, I have repeatedly struggled to perform optimaly on my professors exams. Math461, which is a linear algebra course has similar traits to the 216 course. I struggle to perform on exams despite the material not being as difficult as my grade makes it seem. This semester I decided to take CMSC250H, which was an honors discrete mathematics class. I kind of regret this decision as I despise mathematics and this course is almost 100% mathematics, not to mention I am not strong in mathematics and the peers and professor in that class make me feel like I really lost. One of the only classes I am doing quite well in is GEOL204 which is essentially a Dinosaurs and Prehistoric animals class which I am taking as a gen ed. I am deeply enjoying this class and my grade shows my enjoyment and love for dinosaurs. This class is quite a nice break from my other 3 difficult classes. I also took a 1 credit matlab course which was quite easy and wasn't much of a struggle for me. I would honestly just tell future students to take classes with strong professors and to not take honors classes just because they sound cool, and to only take them if you feel that you could handle the intensity quite well. I would also urge students to work on studying strategies and maybe study with friends as that tended to help boost my grade. Ironically, I have had the most conversations with my cmsc250h professor as the honors section of the class is much smaller than the other section (500 vs 30 students). This provides with a great opportunity to get involved in research however my interests do not really lie with this professors work so it wouldn't have been beneficial to me take research with him. However, I would tell students in order to get close with faculty, they should show up to office hours and stay behind after class occasionally to have some chats with them. Relationships and making friends at college is vital to survival at college. If you do not have friends, this place will not be a fun time at all. The great thing about this campus is that it is massive and there are so many people, no one here really judges anyone unlike in say high school , so finding others like you or with similar interests is quite easy as long as you look around and are open to talking to people. Some things you can do are join clubs and their group mes or attend campus events and game nights. The greatest obstacle is honestly yourself and your insecurities stopping you from creating new relationships or the fear in your head about how things can go wrong. If you get rid of this irrational fear, you will easily make friends and find people. The best way next years freshman can best use their connections with peers, is to use those connections to create more connections, because the more people you know, the more people that can help you with something or the more memories you can make with someone. The aspect I was least prepared for was getting into a healthy habit (waking up at 7am, going lifting, swimming, running, etc). I would tell freshman to enjoy the first few weeks, then slowly start waking up early and earlier because when you wake up early, you get so much more work done by the end of the day then if you wake up late and stay up late at night. Its hard to believe I am already going to become a sophomore, having lost my freshman year, it still feels like I haven't really experienced college life in its fullest yet, and I am hopeful for it. If life has taught me anything, it is to live life in the moment and just take it all in, because before you know it, itll only be a distant memory in a photo album.
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