I love DC!

My first semester is somehow almost over. It has gone by much faster than I’d expected it to pass me, and life at the university is noticeably different than how I’d initially imagined it would be during my senior year of high school. Many of the friends I knew back then have moved to different schools, but a good portion also attend UMD. I’ve found that much like in high school, these are the people I primarily hang out with. We meet up on a pretty regular basis (around 3 times a week) to chat, eat meals, and play board games. We've also walked around campus and gone on trips to DC, which tend to be pretty fun experiences. I’ve also found that making friends is a much slower process than I remembered it being in high school, I think in the high school environment, you’d be stuck in the same two or three classes with someone, and so had time to discuss. Whereas in college, I find that there aren't really many opportunities to talk with other students in my class. Classes are also a lot less frequent so you don’t see people most days of the week, only twice or thrice usually. I’ve attempted to attend a few clubs, but I’ve found that for such a large offering there really aren’t that many that interest me, and many of these don’t provide the best experience (much of the process is left to newcomers to learn with little guidance from those in charge).

The college campus is very large. In some ways this is a disadvantage, as my farthest class is a good fifteen minutes from my dorm, but I also find it a positive. There’s a decent amount of things to discover and explore on campus, even though by now I’ve seen it all and started to get bored. One of my friends lives on a campus where walking end to end can be accomplished in under ten minutes, and I cannot fathom how life on such a tiny place must be compared to UMD. My dorm (Centerville hall) is fine. It’s nothing to write home about (we don’t even have a lounge on my floor), but it’s thankfully not one of the worst dorms on campus since it still has AC. But the lack of a lounge has made it much harder to connect with the people in my dorm. Luckily it has a great location. It’s a three minute walk from Centerville to Yahentamitsi diner, a five-minute walk to the La Plata/Eppley region, and a ten-minute walk to the Denton Community. Most of my classes are within a half-mile, so I can reach most buildings in under 15 minutes.

Something I did not expect from college is the workload. It is not exactly heavy, but it is a decent amount, and it is rather exhausting. I have a lot of free time on campus, but I cannot really bring myself to do much with it, which is rather disappointing. I think if I had been able to use the time more efficiently, I'd have gotten more done. Oh well. The meals on campus are also pretty mediocre. The dining hall basically switches between the exact two menus every two days, and neither of the menus are very good, they’re just sufficient. I hadn’t expected it, but I really do miss home.

Most of the classes are pretty fine. I’d expected college classes to be exceptionally difficult compared to high school, but from what I can see they’re not much harder, only a lot more disorganized. From my observation, around half my classes do not follow a schedule nearly as closely as classes back in high school did. The manner in which they give out workload is also rather odd. Some classes give a project/assignment, and that functions as the homework for the next week and a half. Other classes give very little work for long stretches of time, then suddenly drop a week’s worth of work on you and give you three days to finish it. I think the college workload is more sporadic and heavy compared to highschool’s, while I had been expecting the opposite. I also find the format of lectures to be much harder to focus on compared to high school’s greater interactivity, but thankfully the classes are usually shorter than my high school periods so it’s not the worst.

CPSG100 is one of my classes, and it’s going pretty well. It occurs once a week for an hour and fifteen minutes, and is located right outside my dorm. It’s a pretty interesting class, as it goes over fascinating topics such as the climate and history (both modern, archaic, and prehistory). It does get a little boring though, as it often covers topics that I’d already learned back in middle school and early high school. Thankfully the professors running the program have enough personality and enthusiasm to keep the class interesting overall.

My advice for those coming to UMD would be to prepare yourself over the summer and get used to creating schedules for yourself. I’d also recommend getting work done over the summer if possible, because there really isn’t enough time on campus. I’d also recommend going out of the dorm often, so as to avoid being cooped up in a rather dull environment for long periods of time.


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