Reflection: First Semester

By Sophia Pei ‘22

It’s now the third week of the second semester and honestly, the first semester really flew by. To be fair, everything seems to fly by when looking back on it – I highly doubt that the Sophia trying to finish my WRIT 150 essay while studying for biology midterm 3 and a chemistry midterm felt that way.

Some suitemates and friends at Welcome Week 2018

First off, hi! I’m Sophia. I’m currently a freshman majoring in Quantitative Biology with a minor in Global Health. I was born in Vancouver and raised in Santa Monica (about 10 miles west of USC).

Me (:

Intro

My first impression of USC: WOW it’s hotter in DTLA and geez there’s a lot of red and yellow brick. To be frank, I had no idea what to expect going into college. I was anxious because it’s college, but honestly, it wasn’t too worried since I felt like I’ve been preparing for it for the past 12 years.

High school graduation

With my hometown just a 30 minute Expo ride away, I’m blessed with the luxury of being able to visit my hometown and to see some of my hometown friends every weekend. Enveloping myself with the security net of my childhood friends, it was difficult for me to try to make new connections at USC initially. I’ve known most my close friends since elementary school so it was strange being around new peers. Of course, there’s both the good and bad of not sharing the experiences as many of my peers. It was wonderful to have a fresh start but also unsettling to redefine who I thought I was to a bunch of people who had no prior impression of me.

Some of my closest friends <3

Living on Campus

Though my dad encouraged me to do otherwise, I needed to establish some sort of independence from home and chose to live on campus. I live in the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Floor in Parkside IRC. As a single child and SoCal resident, I really wasn’t ready to share a bathroom with the 40 other residents and knew that AC was a must. While Parkside has the stereotype of being quiet and unsocial, all my closest friends are all in my building – one of whom I’m fortunate to have in my suite. It was incredibly eye-opening to live surrounded by people my age, especially after spending my first 18 years without anyone my age in our building, much less my home. Some of my closest friends at home lived down the street, but getting together was usually still a planned effort (even if the “plan” was a 5 minutes notice text or phone call). The spontaneity of simply knocking on Suite A and asking if people wanted to have dinner, “study,” or visit Koreatown was novel. On the flip side, it was also a process of learning when to prioritize academics and other responsibilities over my social life since it wasn’t an issue I had to deal with on such a scale prior. Regardless, there isn’t a thing I would change about my choice to live in IRC – in fact, I loved it so much that I decided to apply for an RA position (fingers crossed about that).

Left: My room, 4002D Parkside IRC 
Right: My suitemate and I

Classes

I took BISC121, CHEM115, WRIT150 and LATIII first semester. I probably made the most connections in Bio and Chem simply since the Freshman Science Honors program ensured I spent about 20 hours a week with my fellow life science majors. It’s quite deceptive that STEM classes have 4 rounds of “midterms.” While it was nice to have the same cohort of people to form study groups with, it didn’t make midterm season (which was essentially occurred every 3 weeks for these classes) any less stressful. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’ve been taking two courses of science since 9th grade, I would have felt a lot less prepared. Of all my classes, Latin surprised me the most. Despite having taken Latin for 4 years, Latin at USC was VERY different from Latin at Samohi. In high school, the teachers treated Latin as a living language. Samohi latin was geeky and spontaneous (shoutout: watch the musical that the Samohi Latin program produced: Barnabus et Bella) and very far from how most people would define a classics class. Latin at USC was all translation based. Except for the one class we had a substitute professor, we didn’t talk in Latin. While I do feel like my grammatical understanding of the language improved a lot, I think I still prefer Samohi’s method. 

Some USC friends at HoneyMee in Little Tokyo

Clubs

The hardest thing for me to adjust to was the illusion of free time that college classes seem to provide. In comparison to the typical 40 hours/week schedule of high school, the 20 hours/week schedule of college was amazing. Nevertheless, I managed to overbook myself with clubs during Involvement Week and had to slowly narrow down the things I was actually interested in so I could realistically balance my extracurriculars and academics. I settled on Science Outreach, MEDLife, Visions and Voices, and Trojans360. After being a math tutor at Mathnasium in High School, I knew I wanted to continue teaching children since it was something that was incredibly rewarding. Being in Scout allowed me to combine my passion for science and teaching. Visions and Voices gave me a break from my STEM-intensive class schedule and helped me stay in touch with the visual and performing arts. Finally, I joined Trojans360 mainly because I needed a part-time job now that I couldn’t work as a math instructor at Mathnasium, but it was also because it was novel and interesting.

Science Outreach at 32nd Street School 

Reflection

Even though the first semester went really well, there are a lot of things I wish I could have changed. I wish I had invested more time into getting to know my first-semester roommate. I wish I had made more of a point to talk to my professors (be it during class or at office hours). And finally, I wish I had depended less on the security of home and the people near it.

Some of my closest friends in Big Bear, CA

Moving forward

Now it’s a new year with new classes, a new roommate (my previous one decided to live off-campus), and new experiences. Winter break was a much-needed recharge, but I am glad to be back at school. Going into second semester, I’m still struggling with a lot of the same things ranging from missing my grade school friends to struggling to plan my courses. It was interesting coming back to the red-brick campus and recognizing it as familiar and comfortable. Minus a couple of scheduling issues, second semester is progressing smoothly and I’m excited to see what the rest of freshman year will yield.

My suitemates/friends at Universal 

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