Out of all of the courses that I took during my first two semesters, it is hard to pick a single one that was the most surprising. Each of them had their own aspects that were essentially unique to each other, with surprises across them all. For example, MATH340 and MATH341 was in a small classroom, kind of like the ones you would find in a traditional high school. The scale of this class, along with the number of students who took it meant that the teacher knew everybody’s face and name. The interconnectedness made everyone feel welcome and they were probably my favorite classes so far, although I am a math major, so I might be subconsciously biased. Another interesting surprise, still with those math course, was that they used chalk boards exclusively. I had always thought that the use of chalk boards, especially exclusively, was a thing of the “ancient” past, but now I see how good they can be. The third thing about these pair of classes was that prior to my first semester, my academic advisor said that I could do MATH340 as I met the requirements, but I was initially hesitant because she described it as “Calc 3 on steroids.” I decided to give it a try, and found that her concept of its difficulty was not really accurate. I guess the main thing that I failed to see prior was that I came from the Science and Mathematics Academy, a high school that specializes in STEM, and my AP Calculus BC teacher, who would frequently show us examples using programs like Mathematica, could easily have been described as teaching us “Calc 2 on steroids.” Seriously, he would teach us stuff that wasn’t even on the AP exam because he felt like it and thought a university professor would expect us to know it. Another surprise I had was in my first semester, CMSC132. The class size of this had shocked me, as I had never had any class that large before, or even during that semester besides that one. In fact, none of my classes this semester are that large either. In terms of strategies incoming students could use, I think the best way to be surprised by what you find is to keep an open mind about what might occur. Don’t have an idea in your mind that your experiences adapt to. Also, be willing to experience those surprises, as their outcomes, may also surprise you about how good they are, and if they’re not, now you at least have that experience.
When it comes to developing mentoring relationships, I have had mixed results. I am one of those people who does not do well in social situations, so any type of connection is not the easiest to develop. Similarly, one thing that I’ve recently noticed is that I’m not the best at seeing other people’s faces when I walk by them, which can be a challenge when I walk by my friends or others I know and only realize it because I heard their voice. I honestly feel like I have better success identifying someone I know by directly looking at the back of their head than their face being in my field of view but not actually looking directly at them. However, where I have had success is in smaller classes that I take or have taken. One thing I would highly recommend is to try to get the teacher or professor to know you. If you ever get proof that the teacher knows you by your name or by your face, that is a really good sign. In those classes, just try to repeatedly smile at them, be engaged, laugh when appropriate, etc. In my MATH341 class, as my schedule has allowed, I even have just stayed behind just to be in the presence of, and to talk to my professor occasionally, sometimes asking about his own research, which is another thing that could help incoming students.
In all, I think I adjusted to the university pretty easily. As I said previously, social situations and I aren’t perfect for each other, and I think that has extended to relationships with other students. I think there are many large obstacles in pursuing these types of relationships. For me in particular, I don’t like to ask for myself to be involved in anything. Within a group, I sometimes feel like I’m invading a conversation if I’m not invited into it, and unfortunately, this type of invitation to hang out with people I kind of know, but not from high school, came only once, and it was during the time I was dealing with the constant pain of the skin infection I had, although at that time I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something else less severe. I think other obstacles included that the dorm room doors close automatically, so I could never just leave it open, and that our floor doesn’t have a lounge, so hanging out there was also never an option. Another obstacle specific to me is that I seriously struggle with remembering faces and names. There are exceptions for people I see a lot, like my roommate and my professors, but I am always amazed at how many people always seem to know my name when I just happen to be in a class with them, or sometimes when I don’t even know how they know me. Lastly, is the word “friend” itself. Long story short, I’m not the best at identifying the different between a friend of mine, and someone who is just being nice and kind. I usually just abbreviate it to calling the people I went to high school with as my friends, but in reality, it is more of a spectrum of how much of a friend they are to me. Calling someone as a friend or not a friend doesn’t really work in my eyes. As said, I’m not the best with friendships, and I usually consider myself a bad friend based on how I perceive that my friends see me, so I haven’t really taken advantage of my friends and friendships, so I’m not really the best person to ask about advice relating to that topic. If I had to give advice, I would say to try to push yourself into situations with other people, and in particular, try to be in situations where you see the same other people often, whether it be a club, your floor, a class, or something else.
In retrospect, the thing I was least prepared for, by far, was the skin infection I experienced. It took me what felt like forever to realize that was likely the cause, and as such it had time to grow. Based on what the doctor had said, I suspect I probably only had a few days left before going to the emergency room would have been necessary. It was also unfortunate that the week or two in which it occurred happened to overlap with my birthday, so even though the University was closed on my birthday to due a snow storm, I was basically lying in bed for most of the day. This was also not the first time I have underestimated the severity of an extraordinary circumstance that puts me in some form of danger, and due to my general problem of underestimating these types of things, I don’t think it will be the last. Another thing that I don’t think I was super prepared for was the problems of going home. When I went home at the conclusion of the fall semester, and the first two times this semester something completely unexpected occurred. At the end of the fall semester, my entire neighborhood, while I was with my dad in the car heading home, lost power. We later found out it was a suspected gas leak, and given that just prior to the fall semester starting a house about 1.65 miles away (as the bird flies) from my house blew up, they were being extremely cautious. As it turns out, it was later confirmed as a gas leak, although based off of where they were working it was under the sidewalk far enough from my house that it was not in danger. The first time I went home this semester was, as described previously, the skin infection incident. The second time was Spring Break. That Friday was very exciting, as I was going to have some time off from my responsibilities and schoolwork. However, on the ride home, I was informed that our cat, Molly, had gone to the vet that day, which wasn’t out of the usual, given she was just shy of 17.5 years old. Long story short, she started getting fluid in her lungs that day or during the evening, and over Spring Break, let’s just say I had to deal with one less family member. I was able to be with her when we went to the vet emergency room that evening though, and given the chances of me being there given how often I’m at college, it felt like it was destined to go that way. This next part is a bit of a tangent but I want to say it anyway and I currently am not caring about how you may react to reading this. My family, mainly my mom’s side of the family, believes in ghosts / spirits. There are countless (Technically, this fact bothered me enough that I decided to count all unique stories I knew about from my family and came to just over 20) unique occasions (Most of these actually come from a single person trustworthy enough that I would trust them with my life) where the person in question somehow experienced the presence of a ghost. As you have emphasized in your lectures, unfortunately these are first-person accounts, or have links to memories that go back decades, so they can’t be used as scientific evidence of anything. Similarly, you should not accept something as fact if there is no useful benefit to an outsider, like how there is no useful benefit to some random dude’s pet monkey that only he can see, hear, and detect. That said, it annoys me that there is a way to scientifically test this that no one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever done. The key variable that can be tested is the transfer of information. There are stories I know where information has been transferred to the individual who should not have known the information otherwise, and if that is tested for, say with a dice and some method of communication (maybe a Ouija board?), if the accuracy of the individual guessing the die outcome, who shouldn’t know what the die lands on, significantly improves when using the method than without, maybe that could indicate something. That is just a rough example but it gets the point across. Anyway, back to the main topic, when all things are considered, there is no general advice that can be given to incoming students, because every person is different and will experience different unexpected scenarios. The best advice that I think that I can give is to be open to different possibilities, and to get to know people that you can rely upon. As mentioned earlier, there was one time prior to this year where I severely underestimated the severity of something which, although I can’t guarantee what it was, based on the symptoms at the time, easily could have been fatal, although I didn’t know that when I was dealing with it. In that delicate situation, I believe one of the reasons I got through it, not only fine, but without any noticeable permanent damage is because I happened to be in a location surrounded by others, and something directly cause by that fact could be the reason the symptoms stopped (The other option is that they stopped on their own, which I can’t rule out is what actually happened). The point is having friends, or at least others you can rely upon could end up helping you on an assignment, with some problem you have, or if you’re super unlucky like I probably was, could literally be a matter of life or death.