After graduating from Seminole State College, I transferred to the University Of Central Florida and continued on for my Bachelor's degree. When it came to parking, size of the campus and size of the classes, everything was completely next-level for me. At first I was surprised about all the new things immediately thrown at me, but I later made some adjustments to help cope.
I prepared in advance when it came to parking. I got my pass early, and I came one hour before my classes started. I even asked veteran UCF students about which parking garage I should be aiming for, but it still didn't prepare me for my first day for parking. Traffic, heavy traffic, filled the campus. I couldn't move for a long time and, as a result, I was 30 minutes late to class and missed most of the syllabus information that the professor talked about. My goal is now to get there one hour and 30 minutes earlier or park somewhere near the campus and walk from there.
At Seminole State College, usually my classes had around 20 to 25 students, but now most of my UCF classes has around 30 to 50 students. It made things difficult for me when it came to interacting with the professor. Also, the classrooms were much bigger than the ones at SSC. The professors even gave us assignments due two or three days after. That was something that most of my professors at Seminole State didn't do much. Given the difficulty, my plan is to not slack off at all and have the mentality of doing the work right away rather than wait till its the last day to turn it in.
The size of the campus baffled me. I knew it was going to be a huge campus, but that still didn't prepare me for having to walk around it. The building abbreviations were kind of hard to memorize (because they were so many) but thankfully my two classes were in separate buildings that are right next to each other. The Student Union was my favorite place to be. Not only were there plenty of fast food joints, but there were also information centers to help new students (like myself) get involved or just find the place they needed to be. The goal for me now is to just learn which buildings are near the student union so I can know which one is the one I'm supposed to be in. Also, this helps to manage the time it takes to get to each building. And we all know just how important time management is for students; it's everything.
While at first it was overwhelming, my experience in community college helped me make things easier at UCF when it came to expectations in classes. I'm looking forward to a great semester!
Pro tip: Also, lastly, get a campus map; it was hard for me to traverse campus blindly. I explored almost all of the UCF Campus because I did not know where I was going. Make sure that isn't you next semester!