Thinking back on this semester, the format of the CPSG class surprised me a bit. Judging from the class name and what I knew from college lectures, I expected long lectures by professors about content similar to the AP Environmental Science Class I took in high school. The lectures and group discussions were activities that I had expected to see and I did enjoy them, but the excursions I did not expect. It was similar to a field trip, but I was given more freedom to go around. Even though the scholar’s volunteer day at the aquatic garden was very muddy, I did enjoy the excursions very much. I also did not expect to be taught how to code HTML in the class, but it was pretty simple. It helped that I had some prior experience with creating webpages. The weekly quizzes were similar to quizzes in other classes and went over most of what we covered in class. The discussion questions were pretty straightforward and was just review from the assigned chapters in the books. In CPSG, we covered things that I had expected like climate change and climatology, but I did not expect to go over topics like pseudoscience and logical fallacies. These unexpected topics were nonetheless very interesting, and it was interesting to be able to recognize these fallacies in everyday interactions. I did expect to go more into the science portion of climate change, similar to how it is in APES. My high-school vision of college life and my current life right now are pretty different. I did not have a college-aged sibling, so I mainly based my expectations on movies that I saw. I thought that college life was all about cramming and doing group projects, as well as meeting new people and joining clubs. I did have to cram for some tests, but my classes were not too hard this semester, so I fortunately did not pull any all-nighters. I also met many new people and joined clubs, and I was surprised by how friendly people were. I have seen a lot of friends from my hometown in Maryland, but I was surprised by how often I’d see them. Coming into UMD, I did not really have a plan for what I was going to be in the future, so I was surprised when so many people around me seemed like they were already set on a certain profession, and were already doing stuff their future, whether it be attending workshops, learning skills in classes/clubs, or networking in societies. I had pretty bad experiences with my high school cafeteria, so I was amazed with the quality of food in the dining halls, especially in the Y. I did not expect this quality of food, especially since in some movies the food looked disgusting. Going into UMD, I heard of the “Freshman 15”, the 15 pound weight gain that freshmen experienced, though I did not think that my diet would change this much. I went from eating 2 or so meals a day to 3 per day with 2 plates of food each meal. I got to the point where every meal I would eat until I felt like exploding, which was not too good (only threw up once though). Some pieces of advice I would give to future SGC students would be to just try new things, and don’t be afraid to drop things as well. Since arriving here, I have joined a few clubs, and tried out and dropped many more. Time, as a college student especially, is precious, so students shouldn’t stretch themselves too thin across too many obligations. Another piece of advice is to not procrastinate on doing assignments or studying for tests. Waiting too long will just lead to a mountain of tasks to do. In addition, students should do their best to communicate with their groups on group projects and pay attention if a group member seems to be ghosting the rest. If they are, they should be reported to the teacher as soon as possible. I once had a group member just not do any work for months, and though the professor was understanding of our situation, it forced the rest of our group to cover the parts that we were missing.