Zachary Iravani's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

At my first semester at the University of Maryland there has been things that met my expectations and things that haven’t. I think it true to say classes have been roller coasters of highs and lows (mostly lows).

When it comes to my math class, MATH 241, also known as Calculus III, I expected there to be endless homework and classwork that would be super tedious while at the same time being helpful in preparing me for the midterms. However, in my class there is virtually no homework assigned, only optional problems from the textbook which I didn’t buy. This was like a double edged sword because on one hand, I never really had to spend much time on match every week because no homework but while I was doing nothing, my classmates were doing the optional work and getting ahead. That was probably why so many people in my discussion got an 100% on the first midterm while I got a low C on it. Since that unpleasant grade, I’ve started studying more for match which reflects my significantly higher scores for the next two midterms. Overall, the difficulty of the course is what I expected of a college level advanced math class but the work load was actually lower than my expectations.

Now on to chemistry, the harbinger of despair. The chemistry class I’m taking is CHEM 135 and it is most definitely the most challenging class I’ve ever taken in my 18 years of living. I expected it to be hard because everybody says it is but I didn’t expect the class to be changing topics so fast. Every week seems like a completely different subject and it doesn’t help that it takes me longer than that to understand it. The amount of homework is what I expected with about four hours a week for me. The thing is though the homework usually says it should take an estimated time of an hour which just speaks volumes to how difficult the questions are. However, I did not expect my teacher to allow us to use a notecard filled with information front and back on the midterms and even the final. That was an extremely pleasant surprise. Also finding out that discussion was a waste of time has helped given more time (to nap) since I don’t go to it.

With my mechanics class, ENES 102H, it was actually way easier than I thought it would be. I did not expect for the midterms and graded work to be always way more simple than the homework questions. Though the trade off is that homework takes a while to do. Finally with my introductory civil and environmental engineering class, ENCE 100, I expected there to be various projects around the field. However we only get one assignment a week and they aren’t even related to engineering. The good thing about this is though is that the assignments are really quick and easy making the class basically nonexistent.

Probably the most different class to what I expected was CPSG 100. I didn’t expect us to read three books and answer questions about them (even though that was said during orientation). I didn’t expect us to cover the topic of pseudoscience because it relates things that aren’t scientific yet the class is called SCIENCE and Global Change. I did enjoy though how we covered it because I myself am into hearing conspiracy and supernatural theories such as aliens. That being said, the class aimed to disprove these theories using fallacies which disappointed my conspiracy driven brain. Moving over, we did learn a lot about climate change and global temperatures rising which I love to learn due to my hopeful future environmental engineering career. Regarding the activities outside class such as the scavenger hunt field trip and the excursion to the National Museum of Natural History, I expected them to be not my favorite thing, and yes they were not my thing. I’m not a big museum fan because to me they are just boring with a bunch of walking and glancing around.

My highschool vision of college was that I’d barely have any free time because of classwork, studying, and social activities. Living in Centreville hall, campus life has been surprisingly free. I feel like my dorm’s floor is very quiet and not really active. I don’t have too much work to where I can’t have free time and I don’t have to study that much to get decent exam scores. I really thought college was going to change me and my lifestyle but it really hasn’t. To future SGC students, I’d tell them that they’d probably have way more time than they think and that they should use to explore new activities like clubs while also doing what they love.

Last modified: 11 December 2023