Semester Reflections

Semester 1

The adjustment to university life was smoother than I expected. I felt that I was ready to shift to living on my own and I took on the challenge with open arms, as well as open ears and open eyes. It’s mostly everything I expected. My biggest surprise was the difficulty of doing laundry — I didn’t know there were only four machines! So I’ve learned to plan accordingly and do laundry at strange hours. Most of accommodating to university life has been learning to roll with the punches and plan ahead. Sometimes things go wrong and that’s okay, don’t get frustrated, just move on and deal with it.

I feel very lucky when it comes to my workload. I only have one official final exam, the rest are projects that are due much later. Furthermore, the exam is on statistics, something I learned already in high school. As a humanities student, studying journalism and cinema, I feel very grateful seeing the workloads and difficult work of the STEM majors. Even so, I struggle with procrastination. Although it wasn’t horrendous this semester, I would definitely like to procrastinate much less in the spring.

The best “happy surprise” when it comes to Arts Scholars was the field trip. Seeing Cirque du Soleil was such a blast and it was such a wonderful opportunity to see an artform that I don’t have much experience with performed live in front of me. I also valued the opportunity to get to know how the Metro system works when it comes to traveling from campus to DC. My group spent some time down there after the show and also had fun there too.

The most impactful thing I learned came from the discussion on what is art. My mind was opened to the different possibilities that art can take shape in. For example, I remember vividly our debate on whether or not a urinal can be considered art. I felt that a urinal could be considered art, while others thought that a urinal could not be art. It was a very valuable discussion in my eyes.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced so far has been overcoming my tendency to stay quiet and keep to myself. The most fun experiences I’ve had on campus have resulted from leaving my comfort zone and making new friends, who show me new things and take me to new places. Without reaching out to these friends in the first place, I wouldn’t have had these wonderful experiences.

This year I feel that I’ve really tried to enter a brave space in my consumption of art, even outside of Arts Scholars. In 2024 I’ve tried to expand my music taste to other genres and artists that I wouldn’t generally listen to. So far, it’s been a real success. I’ve exposed myself to so much new, interesting material and have found so many awesome artists. It’s also allowed me to revisit albums that I didn’t like very much in the past with new ears — with many of them I’ve totally reversed my opinion! The same has occurred in Arts Scholars — learning ballroom dancing was definitely a time where I had to enter a brave space. But afterwards, I felt very good about the experience and the memories I made. I learned about a new type of dance that I was unfamiliar with!

Often my expectations do not match reality. Sometimes this results in a happy surprise or a huge disappointment. My first semester of university was 99% happy surprises, I’m glad to report. Just like I said before, you have to learn to roll with the punches. I’m very grateful for my roommate and my other friends, and I’m very grateful for all of the resources that Scholars and the University of Maryland offers.