This fall was my first semester at UMD and I think SGC was an interesting experience to start it off. I had a very STEM heavy set of courses, having Comp. Sci. 216, Math 240, Physics 121. I took CCJS 105 as a general education credit. I really didn't like how scheduling worked here, as me being in Letters and Sciences (the undecided major) gave me a lot of trouble in scheduling my classes, and will give me trouble when scheduling my spring semester. For the classes themselves,I immediately noticed that the teaching style here is straight-to-the-point with little wasted time compared to high school and I liked the efficiency. In my math and CCJS courses, notes were absolutely necessary and it was a very hard learning curve. The workload was way more than I imagined though, especially for my physics lab reports which usually took 4-6 hours each week if you include the lab and my computer science projects which take even more just for debugging reasons. Midterms and finals are new to me and I got used to them pretty fast, but I didn't expect the exams for all of my classes to be around the same time (for example, all my first midterms would happen in the same week). This resulted in a lot more cramming than I would have liked, but it all worked out.
As for CPSG100 and SGC itself, the service day gave me a really bad impression of what the rest of the semester was going to be like. It didn't end up being like that, though. The Washington D.C. trip was extremely helpful in helping me figure out the D.C. metro system and I've put that knowledge to use several times since then. My excursion was at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and it was surprisingly very interesting. My favorite activity was probably sampling fish from the pond using nets and it ended up yielding very large fish. This activity was more or less what I expected an SGC field trip would be like. Other than that, I think the course was very lecture heavy. I also didn't expect us to cover so much human history or general scientific knowledge. I expect that more specific topics about climate change and the environment are going to be the focus of the following semesters, though.
The living arrangement here was disappointing, though. I knew that dorms were going to be a steep learning curve, but there were a lot of problems living in Centreville. Broken elevators, heaters turned to the max in the fall so it was constantly 80 degrees in my room, broken laundry machines, and small beds are my biggest problems so far while living here. Even through all of this, I still preferred it to living back home just because of the extra freedom. The food situation is also about what I expected it to be, with food quality decreasing over the course of the semester at the dining halls. Something I didn't expect was that there were events all the time, whether they were academic or just for fun. The first look fair let me join a club which was pretty fun and I also found some friends through my classes.
My advice to a future SGC student is to get your excursion report done as soon after the excursion as you can, as I forgot about it until finals week. For academics, I recommend going to office hours for hard classes or hard assignments. Barely anyone goes to them, so there isn't usually much of a wait time unless it's right before an exam or a project due date. Also, Centreville's location is very nice depending on your classes: it's close to the Stamp, the dining halls, and most of your major academic buildings (it's very close to the Regents Circle), so if you have a choice, I would recommend living there because I believe the problems I had will be fixed by next year. Also, you should find something fun that will fill the free time you have.
Overall, this semester taught me how to be truly independent for the first time. It was the first time that I was entirely responsible for everything I did. It really helped improve my time management skills (for this, I recommend the Microsoft Todo app).