First Year Of College Reflection Post

So I recently finished my first year of college. I had a lot of expectations going into it, but honestly, most of my expectations were pretty off. I mostly enjoyed the year overall. There were definitely parts that weren't so great, but that's how life goes. I'm super glad it's over and that I'm home for the summer. Some of the big highlights were undergoing two major changes, taking 9 classes, surviving living with a complete stranger for 9 months, and meeting some cool people.

I guess the first thing I'll talk about is the academics since that's the main part of school. I didn't think the classes were necessarily that hard. To me, they seemed very comparable to my high school classes. There's a system and once you learn the system, you can do very well. The classes didn't necessarily focus on learning. Instead, it was just memorization for the big tests. The biggest difference in college is how high stakes the classes are. In most cases, you're paying thousands of dollars, and the large majority of your grade is based on several exams. One of my classes this past semester had 80% of the final grade based on four exams. That's pretty ridiculous to me, because if you do badly on just one of them, it screws up your chances of getting a good grade. I don't really feel like I learned that much either. I didn't care about my classes all that much, since they were just a bunch of general education classes. Luckily, I finished pretty much all those types of classes, so the rest of the time I'm in school will be focused on what I'm actually studying.

I'll also quickly touch on the whole two major changes thing real quick. Basically, I went in undecided and knew I wanted to at least declare some major by the end of my first semester. I already knew that I kind of wanted to do something with math or statistics. Once my first semester ended, I declared my major which was sort of combination of statistics and computer science. After my second semester, I realized I didn't like computer science all that much, so I decided to switch to doing straight up statistics. I also figured out I really liked economics, which made me add that as my second major. I'm definitely really happy with what I'm studying now and am pretty excited for all the classes I'll be taking in the future.

Another big aspect of college is the social scene and the dorm life. I met some cool people for sure, but also a lot of immature idiots. I came to college to get a good education, so the social aspect isn't too important to me. The dorm life was exactly what you'd expect. The dorm wasn't the best, but it was totally fine for the year. I absolutely hated my roommate. Not gonna go into all those details, since they're not that important. I'm not dead, and I don't really have any super bad horror stories about her. I wouldn't discourage doing a random roommate, which is what I had. I know they work out in some cases and don't in others. It's just all up to luck whether you get someone good or not. I learned pretty early on that you only need to able to coexist with your roommate and don't necessarily have to be their best friend. I'm glad I'll never have to see the girl again. Luckily, I'm living off-campus for the rest of time in college, so that's something I'm really looking forward too.

Honestly, I can't think of much else to say about my first year. There's probably a ton of little things I'm forgetting, but hopefully I got the gist of it all. I've got a video coming soon about this as well. I will say that I think college is a scam. If I didn't need it for what I wanted to do, I don't think I'd keep going. In this day and age, it's not as great of a value as it used to be. I don't wanna make this post any longer, so maybe I'll make a different post about why I think that. But yeah, my first year wasn't awful but not super amazing either. This post touches on more of the negative side of my year, but it really was totally fine. All the really positive things that happened to me are things I'd rather keep to myself. Anyways, I'm looking forward to the coming years, because they really can only get better from here. Thanks for looking! Hope you enjoyed reading this more personal post! More EDC related stuff coming soon!