The icy wind blew my hair in all different directions as I stepped out of my favorite study spot on campus. It was hard to believe that just three months ago, I was using Google Maps to find my way to organic chemistry lecture, wishing that a cool breeze would give a temporary break from the August sun. 

Now, I navigated through the never-ending construction, glancing at the familiar brick and marble architecture that once felt intimidating. Where did all the time go?  If one semester can go by in the blink of an eye, then I wonder how the next seven will feel like. 

As I reflect on my first semester of college, there are so many aspects I could talk about: my terrible Calculus teaching assistant who actively did nothing, getting involved with a research lab, or how Introduction to Psychology was the worst class for me. 

Yet, I don’t want this to be solely about what happened; rather, I want this to be about what I took away, and how I changed from the person I was when I graduated high school. Overall, I could break this semester into three categories: unlearning, learning, and relearning (I promise, this will all be more concrete as I give examples)! 

One of my favorite buildings on campus! Credit: Johns Hopkins University Instagram.

During our first group advising meeting, one of the teaching professors in the biomedical engineering department mentioned something that stirred in my mind for a while: “You were all in the top of your class in high school, and you all won’t be at the top of your class here.” 

I walked out of that meeting with a lingering question: What did it mean to be at the top of the class? 

In high school, it meant earning the highest grades; in the context of college admissions, it meant attaining a GPA that put a student in the top 5% of their class. 

College admissions led me to internalize a faulty view of what it meant to be “smart.” With the most elite schools in the country receiving more than 50,000 applications a year, grades are inevitably used as a filter; after all, why bother reviewing the application of someone with a 2.0 GPA? Thus, I believed that in order to be viewed as intelligent and capable in this process, I had to earn perfect grades (this was stressful as my high school reported numerical values for grades, and not letters) and convey my extracurriculars in a way that made me stand out. 

I was wrong. 

The difference between a 93 and 98 wasn’t as big as I thought it was, and the stress I put myself through trying to “avoid” losing points wasn’t worth it. Ultimately, it took away from what mattered: extracurricular pursuits. These activities provided the space to apply what I had seen in a textbook or learned in chemistry class.

At the university I attend, there is no concept of class rank, and final grades are reported as letters (with professors deciding what numerical grade ranges constitute an A, B, C, etc). For example, in my organic chemistry class, test averages above 80% equate to an A; thus, there is no “difference” between an 85% and 98%. After each test, my professor would share test distribution scores, and of course, there’s a handful of students who score in the 90%-100% range. 

I wasn’t one of them. 

Initially, I would think that the peers around me who scored higher on these exams were smarter, and that I wasn’t at par with them  (imposter syndrome kicking in). 

Again, I was wrong. 

When I collaborate with peers on solving organic chemistry problems, I don’t think they’re “smart” because they earn high grades, but because they’re hard working, dedicated and care about the subject matter. Moreover, those around me are smart because of the cool stuff they did outside of class – whether that was a hobby, project, or the like. 

Everything I listed is inherently subjective, and there cannot be a comparison. So maybe there isn’t a “smartest” person in the room? 

Intelligence stems from being able to apply what we know to interesting and unique situations – and maybe contribute to the world of knowledge itself. 

This truly sunk in during my experience with Intro to Psychology. Initially, I was excited for this class, as the lectures covered a variety of topics such as how we perceive the world, animal cognition, and my favorite: decision making. We know what we know about psychology because of countless experiments and research; being a psychologist (or any scientist for that matter) means drawing insights from what has already been done to contribute to the current body of knowledge. 

Our tests for that class couldn’t be any further from reflecting that truth. Worth 75% of our final grade, they were solely multiple choice, testing our ability to memorize minute details from readings and lecture. A lot of people excelled in this area with moderate effort, and 60% of the class had an “A” after the second exam (spoiler alert: despite spending hours on studying for exams, I was not in that category; for a while, I felt bad, as my brain isn’t built for memorization). 

Here’s a test question I remember fondly: 

Babies are able to perform numerical change detection, but not in the case where there’s a ratio of 12 to 18 dots.

1. True 
2. False

Tests and their answer keys were never released, so my wording isn’t exact. The answer to this question happened to be true (somehow I got it right, but this wasn’t the case for other questions). From the lecture, I remember learning about how babies have an innate sense of numbers, as shown by their ability to distinguish between different ratios of dots (the methods of these studies are quite interesting, and if you want to learn more, check out this article). While I don’t know the exact “ratios” that babies were able to distinguish between (as this question required), I remember that as the ratios approached one, the task became increasingly difficult. 

Knowing these ratios (which were pulled from one research article) doesn’t make me a better student of psychology. As I spent hours pouring over transcripts of the psychology lectures I recorded and tried to deliver those lectures to the empty wall of my dorm room, I didn’t feel any more intelligent. I won’t use any of these obscure facts again, either; for instance, I already forgot the specific details of the Navy SEAL Hit Rate Study. However, mastering an organic chemistry concept means that I could apply it to interesting problems or applications in materials science and drug development; I feel more capable. 

Thus, even though I didn’t achieve high grades in psychology, I don’t feel less “smart.” Even though I scored well on the final exam, I don’t feel more “smart” (in stark contrast to my thinking in high school). The feeling of obtaining an “A” is fleeting: it feels monumental in the moment, but not indicative of learning or intelligence in the long term.  

My biggest challenge of university so far has been striking a balance between studying for classes and pursuing what I’m genuinely passionate about, which I elaborate more on in this blog post. 

In the end, I’ve learned the most through extracurriculars and projects that allowed me to synthesize and apply my knowledge – whether that’s in research, content creation, or the engineering groups I’ve joined on campus. I want people to know me for what I’ve done, not for what grades I got. 

Thus, in addition to my required major classes, I’m also trying to take classes that focus on the idea of creating something tangible – such as those in creative writing. Part of achieving balance between classes and extracurriculars is finding a way to blend the two; in doing so, I can pave avenues for me to directly apply what I’m learning. 

The chemistry building at my university! This is where I took organic chemistry tests this semester. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Instagram.  

Putting more work into a class does not equate to higher test scores. 

I believed that the best way to study for my STEM classes was to do endless amounts of practice problems. While this did help me apply the basic concepts I was learning, doing more practice only makes those concepts permanent – often at the expense of others. 

I learned this the hard way in organic chemistry. I went down the rabbit hole doing practice problems, often Googling “challenging practice” and leading myself astray. As I walked back to my dorm after bombing my third midterm on a dark, rainy November evening, I realized that I struggled on certain problems not because I didn’t do enough practice, but because my mind had become so saturated with the problems I did. I didn’t take a step back to recall the most basic concepts. 

In high school, I had tests every other week, so prioritizing practice problems made sense as there wasn’t a big bulk of concepts tested. Yet, in college, tests are much more cumulative, often testing weeks of content (in organic chemistry we had three midterms and a final). To compensate for this, studying should be a combination of both active recall of concepts and practice.  

This will likely be a whole separate blog post (and video) in itself, but relearning how to study involved three facets: 

1. Prioritizing active recall of concepts. 
2. Sticking to problems given by the professor, TAs or other university resources. 
3. Re-doing old problems and explaining the concepts underlying them. 

After my failed organic chemistry midterm, I absentmindedly scrolled through Instagram reels to cope, when I happened to come across the pcfgstudy page. She discussed a technique called “mindmapping,” where she wrote down the connections between the concepts she was learning in the form of a map. She then redrew these maps from memory, thus focusing on active recall. 

I decided to try this technique, and it definitely helped keep all the concepts in my head and understand the material on a deeper level. Here’s how part of the map looked like when studying for my final multivariable calculus quiz: 

College is very different from high school in that there’s now so many moving pieces. In high school, there were standards when it came to how students were graded; the percentages that went toward tests, projects and homework were similar in most classes. Classes weren’t curved either. In college, each professor is free to run the class as they wish. The structure of organic chemistry looked very different from the structure of psychology. Even within organic chemistry, there were three different professors teaching the subject at my university this semester, all with varying styles of tests and criteria to earn an A. 

Because each class has its own style, everyone will have a unique experience with it. For example, I saw extremely positive reviews on Rate my Professor for Introduction to Psychology (a lot of people said tests weren’t “too difficult”), but it ended up being the worst class for me, as tests were completely memorization based. Now that I know I’m more of a conceptual learner, I’ve been trying to get as much information about as many different classes as possible, so that I could register for those that reflect that style of learning. Just because a class is easy for someone else, it doesn’t mean that it’ll be easy for me. 

One of my biggest takeaways from this semester was improving my test taking skills; if there’s one thing that’s consistent across college classes, it’s that tests account for a significant portion of the final grade. Becoming a better test taker is a work in progress for me, but some techniques that have worked include completely focusing on another problem if I’m stuck on the current one, and recalling the obvious definitions when trying to work through the ones I’m stuck with (often, I tend to get tripped up on something extremely simple). 

I stress about the things I care about. I care about doing well in my classes, so naturally, I will stress about it. I care about my blog, so I’ll stress if something goes wrong with it or if I feel I’m not making enough progress. My approach from high school was to try and eliminate stress entirely. Though, that isn’t possible, because to stop stressing would be to stop caring. 

An upperclassman told me that stress shouldn’t prevent us “from having fun.” Stress is prevalent; the best that I could do is keep it at a reasonable level. In addition, stressing about individual grades isn’t worth it; the scores I received on my first round of midterms doesn’t matter now.

Instead, I’ve been trying to channel my worry into improvement: the stress after my failed organic chemistry midterm in November fueled my determination to change my study techniques. The stress I had over the pressures and demands of school fueled my resolve to invest more time into extracurriculars and hobbies – ultimately finding balance. 

We go to college to get an education. But, what does getting an education mean? For me, this entails working toward my definition of intelligence: applying knowledge to create something tangible. I don’t want to learn facts; I want to learn how to think. That’s why I’ve been prioritizing research, engineering clubs and elective classes in creative writing and sociology. That’s also why Intro to Psychology was my worst class this semester (I’m sorry I keep on bringing this up). 

The “perfect college experience” is an asymptote that I can only strive for (credit goes to Paul Kalanithi from When Breath Becomes Air for the wording). College is incredibly fast paced, so I must learn to better spend my time in a way that will help me get an education. During my first semester, I’ve scratched the surface of what this means; the next seven are for me to dive even deeper. 

P.S. First, I know I’ve rambled a lot more in this blog post than I usually do, so I want to thank you for having the patience to read this far. My first semester of college wouldn’t be complete without all the wonderful people I’ve spoken to. To my suitemates, friends, dedicated teaching assistants, and  upperclassmen mentors, thanks for being so supportive and for pushing me to aim higher 🙂