The course that came as the greatest surprise to me was my AASP211 class, which was a class about the film Get Out. The class was surprising, firstly because of what the class focused on and how the class was structured as a once-a-week discussion about post-racial America. I was able to discover this class through Testudo when I was looking for gen eds, and it was also recommended by my CMNS peer mentor. Strategies for students wanting to take interesting classes are to go through things on Testudo, find classes that sound interesting, read reviews to get a sense of the class, and then decide what you want.
I haven’t developed any kind of relationship with faculty except for one friendly professor. Dr.Rowland, my professor for MATH135 and MATH136, just started remembering my name in the first semester because I stood out with my twin brother, I guess. He is by far the closest professor I have, but that’s as much expertise as I have for this topic. It’s hard to develop a relationship with professors, and a great obstacle for me is going out of my way to talk to a professor. I recommend incoming students who want to get closer to a professor by constantly going to office hours, emailing, and participating in class.
Making friends has helped me greatly with adjusting to college life. Keeping in contact with old friends who also went to UMD and making new friends here on campus has helped me with making me more comfortable in this different environment. Making friends with people in the same major as me helped me prepare for the stress of the classes and allowed me to study with others taking similar classes to mine. The greatest obstacle was meeting new people, since I stuck with old friends that came to UMD with me, I didn’t interact with strangers. It was scary to meet new people and harder to maintain the continuous friendships, but a little effort goes a long way. Freshmen who want to make the best use of their connections with their peers should interact and not be afraid of strangers. Attending clubs and talking to those you sit beside is a great way to form connections with peers and helps make uni life a tad bit more manageable.
The main aspect of university academic life I was and still am least prepared for is studying. Throughout high school, I’ve never really taught myself how to study, so going into college, I’ve never really had any good studying habits that I could rely on, so I did suffer in my classes quite a bit. For freshmen who might have the same struggles as I, I recommend one thing: managing time. Be careful of procrastination and take into account how long some assignments are, and finish those before studying. I would say take advantage of all the resources the university gives to you; attend office hours if you have questions, never cram, attend GSS since many are helpful, and make sure to make good use of your time. I feel as though studying will be something many people will struggle with since high school is considerably less difficult than University, so you have to get used to the difficulty of university-level courses.