Silvia's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

The nature of your classes (exclusive of CPSG100): how does their structure, their delivery, their required graded items, etc., compare to what you expected of University courses?

I am taking Calc 3, Introduction to Engineering Design, Scholars Colloquium, a Gen Ed about gender and economics, about sustainable cities, and the rights of discovery. This make-up of classes has proven to be very intellectually interesting but demanding because there is a lot of reading. I am probably reading 200 to 400 pages every week and there is a lot of writing involved in that as well. I think I understand that the structure of classes would be different in college but it feels like there are somehow way fewer assignments but still the same amount of work if not more. I have finally come face to face with how bad my procrastination is. I simply am not able to function or do work until at least 12:00 a.m. and I end up until 2 or 3:00 consistently. It is the only time where I actually am able to force myself to be productive and even then I struggle. This has proven to be a very hard semester because of that. I simply sit around for hours and then finally get freaked out enough and feel the necessity to work and even then it is not efficient.

I was not expecting such a strong emphasis on what real science is and just really digging into pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and all of that. I'll be honest and say that I think I had a pretty strong understanding of these things coming into college and so having such an extensive emphasis on it seemed a little bit redundant. I think especially in this day and age because of seeing such strong examples of it everywhere right now, I feel like I have talked about it so much already. That's not to say it's not important to actually hash out the origins of them, it's really important to understand the core so that you can see where we are now, I was just not ready for the amount of discussion. I think I really hope to learn more about the environment and climate change. I had a lot of fun when we started talking about air currents and water currents and really getting into the dynamics of the natural world so I can't wait to dive in. I went on the SERC Excursion and I had a lot of fun being able to get hands-on with these activities. In my High School program we went on a lot of field trips and did similar things but every single time I did it, I learned something new and something valuable so I always search to do it whenever I can. I think it was really fun to learn about the actual facility in their mission. I haven't heard of it before so learning about all of their initiatives was very inspiring.

I think college life is similar to what I thought it would be, my day is 100% dictated by my own decisions and I can choose who I hang out with or where I study and when I study. I had the worry that I would have a harder time communicating with friends because it is so much more on my hands to reach out and initiate hangouts, which is completely true and I have partly been struggling to do that because I have a hard time reaching out. So there are definitely a lot of things that need to be improved and worked on so that I can have the absolute best college experience but I think as of right now it is pretty reflective of what I thought would be happening. I will say though, I live in Centerville and I am having an amazing time. I have a great roommate and so we go and eat together all the time and talk about our days and what is happening but we're able to give ourselves quiet time in a long time if we need to. I have high school friends that manage to get me to hang out and I am happy from these classes but the transition to college is definitely a big one that I wasn't completely prepared for.

The transition to college is really really hard. Socially, emotionally, academically, it is a very different place that I feel like isn't emphasized enough. Coming from a really strong magnet program, I thought that I wouldn't have such a hard time because I'm used to the stress I'm used to the workload. But the amount of responsibility on yourself to be able to pull off this workload is something that you are not entirely trained for in high school and need time to get used to. Other than academically, again, there is a very big responsibility on yourself to reach out to people and be able to continue connecting with people you care about or want to have a further friendship with so you kind of have lost the forced proximity that high school provides you have to bring that upon yourself. And overall, there is just such a big change coming from high school to college that it takes a toll on you emotionally, there's just a lot going on and you need time to be able to adjust and process and it will not be an easy quick fix, it will take more than a semester and a lot of mental work.

Last modified: 11 December 2025