Before coming to college, I hadn’t thought much about how different the experience would be compared to school before beyond academics. I had not given much thought to the fact that I would be living away from home and small things that I took for granted would be up to me. Things like making sure I eat 3 meals a day, giving more consideration to my living space as it’s not just mine now, and pushing myself to go to classes regularly. The Scholars program has been very different from what I expected as well. At the beginning of the semester, I thought that Scholars would be on the forefront of most of my college experiences, especially coursework. However, my coursework is primarily focused on material for my major, and Scholars provides a break from that repetitiveness.
My classes beyond CPSG100 are all very different. I am an Information Systems and Finance double major so for this past semester I took two general education courses (ARTH261 and INAG110) and two business classes (BMGT230 and BMGT110). One thing that all of these courses have in common is that they are all structured so that the final grade for the class is based on only a few grades. This makes it so that each assignment has a lot of weight towards my final grade in the class. However, this also makes it easier to focus on learning the material for the class rather than constantly having many assignments to do for each class. This is a big change from how my classes were structured in High School and definitely prefer this method. Also, being able to focus on material that I am interested in has made learning in college easier than in high school. I don’t have a particular interest in the sciences so, having the flexibility to make a schedule that is tailored to my interests is a relief. I do enjoy the Scholars Colloquium, however, as it focuses on the impact and importance of the sciences rather than their technical aspects. The one topic that surprised me the most to be covered in colloquium was logical fallacies. I really enjoyed learning about the different flaws in logic that people, including myself, use in arguments. Ever since we learned about the different types of logical fallacies, I’ve begun to notice them regularly. I’ve noticed myself using them, friends, and professors.
Scholars itself has been very different from what I expected coming into college. The events we had at the beginning of the year made college feel much more approachable. I thought that service day, especially, was a lot of fun. I also appreciate that the colloquium is formatted such that we are not worrying about a lot of assignments and grades and can focus on the material.
Living on campus has been very interesting as well. In high school, despite being warned many times, I did not anticipate the amount of walking that I would have to do on a regular basis. Although I prefer how schedules are arranged in college, with classes spread out over the week rather than everyday, I think that this makes it harder for me to get into a daily routine. Finding a routine is important to me because now that I have more control over my schedule I need to do more to make sure that I am productive with my time, and having a routine makes it easier to do that.
For incoming College Park Scholars, I would tell them that they should do their best to move away from the high school mindset of focusing solely on the grade in a class and try to focus on the material being covered in lecture. For me, I’ve found that when I do this I often don’t have as much trouble getting the grade that I do want to end up with and it makes the semester less stressful. Also, I would tell them that skipping class is okay. This may sound like bad advice at first, but I believe that as college students we should be taking more responsibility over our time and be mature enough to know what is the best use of our time. Sometimes, if you don’t learn as well in a lecture, it is fine to skip class and learn in a different way that works for you.
College thus far has been full of different surprises and trying to navigate living on a large campus during a pandemic along with academics and social pressures has been a challenge. Although, so far, college has been far from what I expected in high school, it has definitely been a lot of fun. I have also thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the College Park Scholars program and I am looking forward to new experiences next semester and later.