As the first person in my family to enroll in an undergraduate education in a university, I had many expectations of what college would be, mainly influenced by pop culture, media, and anecdotes heard from rarely seen cousins. As all parents do, my parents tried to prepare me for life as an undergrad student, but life in a college in foreign country was topic my parents simply did not have the ability to prepare me for. In middle and high school, whenever I imagined myself as a college student, the first idea that would come to mind was of a put-together adult. She lived in a big city and was ultra-responsible, from going grocery shopping once a week and taking rides on the subway, to using environmentally friendly tote bags. I certainly would not consider myself to be her (yet). Now that I have almost completed my first semester of my first year of higher education, I can see how my expectations were far from reality.
In my last two years of high school, I was taking almost exclusively AP courses. These AP courses were advertised as college-style classes that supposedly would prepare us for what real college classes were like. Those classes had at least one hundred assignments every semester. In college, there is no class that has anywhere near that number of assignments, effectively eliminating the margin of error we could afford on exams. Here, every assignment is crucial, because not many assignments are graded. It is crucial to do well on every assignment to maintain a good grade, and in college it takes much more effort to be a straight A student than in high school. Another interesting aspect of college is that the upper level classes seem to be easier. The two hundred level math class I am taking has easier content and more lenient grading than both my one hundred level courses. However, this is a heartening prospect for the future, when all of my classes will be upper level, so I am looking forward to junior and senior years. The structure and delivery of courses in college is just as I expected it to be: a professor in front of a powerpoint or chalkboard, speaking the lecture while I furiously copy everything said into my notebook. Overall, my expectations for college classes were far from the reality.
As a student in the scholars program, I attend the scholars colloquium every Tuesday. Leading up to my first day of school, I had the fewest expectations for this class. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when I learned of the broad nature of this class. I like how we covered both scientific history and logical fallacies, all while learning to code a website. I wasn't expecting that these seemingly unrelated topics could be taught together. When thinking of science and global change, I think of human history, and how our technologies developed during industrialization began to cause the degradation of the climate. I didn't foresee that a scientific approach to global change would include such an emphasis on geology. However, this makes sense. Sedimentary rock layers and fossils can tell a longer and more detailed history about the changes Earth has experienced. In the next semesters, I am excited to learn about geoengineering. During the summer before college began, I had an internship in which I participated in a project on geoengineering. By the end of the summer, I had thoroughly researched two geoengineering technologies, so you can only imagine my excitement when I opened the pre-course knowledge survey and found out that geoengineering would be one of the topics in class! Also, I am a student in the engineering school, so I would like to learn more about engineering in class or apply concepts I learned in other classes, to this class. I enjoyed every outside of class activity we did in SGC. While picking the weeds on service day was a hot and grueling task, I had a good time with my peer mentor group. We were all joking, laughing, and complaining about the heat together. On top of that, we helped the ecosystem become healthier. Travelling with a new group to Washington DC, exploring the museums, and getting lunch together was another outing that I enjoyed.
In high school, I thought that stepping onto a college campus would make me blossom into the most sociable and extroverted person I could be. However, my introverted self did not magically dissolve when college began. For the first weeks of college, one of my biggest stressors was my lack of new friends. Every day I would only talk to my roommate and my best friend from high school. Sure, I had met new people in classes, but I hadn't started to meet with them in a non-academic setting yet. However, as the semester progressed and I began to join clubs, attend midterm study sessions, and participate in group projects, a small collection of friends began to appear. While the number of friends I have now is a fraction of the number of friends I had in high school, I can confidently say that I am no longer stressed about my friendships. I know that with each semester, I'll meet new people and they'll soon become my new friends. Living in Centreville is great. I love how close it is to so many of my classes and the diner and some of my friends are people who live in my hall! However, the one thing I did not expect about university life was the sheer amount of walking I would do from one class to the other. In the first weeks of school, I could easily reach upwards of 20,000 steps daily.
My advice to future SGC students would be to approach college with an open mind. Be open to changes you'll make in your daily routine, the food you eat, and the people you talk to. I would advise them to keep up their expectations for their own academic achievements (I've found that having a goal in academics helps me achieve more). However, when it comes to any other aspect of college, be ready to adapt.