Your Name's "Expectations vs. Reality" Reflection Essay

Due Date: December 11, 2023 [and don't forget to delete this line!!]

This assignment is to summarize your experience in SGC so far. It must hit all the points listed below, but feel free to express this in your own style. After all, it is YOUR experience you are writing about!

Your report must be an essay written as an HTML webpage, linked to your main page, of at least 800-1000 words length (longer if necessary; but please do not obsess over word count). Please respond to the prompts below. If you wish to add additional material, however, go ahead.

If you type this up in MS Word or other word processor first, be careful to use only straight (not curly) apostrophes and quotation marks.

Make certain to link this page to your portfolio (as an item in your "SGC Activities" list). And please: make sure you apply your own css to the webpage.

The Topic:
As you finish up your first semester at the University (and in SGC), it is a time to reflect on the difference between what you expected this to be like and how this experience actually played out. In what ways was life as a college student different than you expected? Specifically address:

• The nature of your classes (exclusive of CPSG100): how does their structure, their delivery, their required graded items, etc., compare to what you expected of University courses?
• CPSG100: What have we covered in class that you didn’t expect? What did we not explore (at least not yet) that you were expecting? How does the outside-of-classroom activities compare to what you thought it would be like?
• Life as a University Student: whether you live in Centreville, or elsewhere on campus, or are a commuter student, how does University life compare to your high-school vision of college life?
• What advice would you give to future SGC students to ease them into college life?

Also, please feel free to address how the semester worked in relation to your non-academic life: the difficulties, the benefits, the disappointments, and the unexpected highlights (if any!) of the situation you found yourself in this year.

[A FINAL NOTE: We do recognize the end of the semester is often a time when many high point value projects become due in all your courses, but we really hope that you will put serious thought and reflection into this essay. We (and hopefully you) can use this essay in future years to look back at your time in Scholars to reflect on how that experienced affected your future experiences at the University of Maryland.]

Last modified: XX Sometember 202Y